BOY 
KNEW 



FOUR DOGS 



LAURENCE HUTTON 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelt2i-J^ 6 ^ -^i 

^W-Q'] 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

. ^ 




TIIACKEKAY AND TIIK LJUY 



A BOY I KNEW 

AND FOUR POGS 

By Laurence Hutton 

Profusely Illustrated 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1898 

2nd COPY, 
1898. 







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Bt LAURENCE HUTTON. 



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Copyright, 1898, by IIabpeb & Brothkus. 

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TO 

MARK TWAIN 

THE CREATOR OP 

TOM SAWYER 

ONE OF THE BEST BOYS 
I EVER KNEW 



May the light of some morning skies 
In days when tlie sun kneto how to rise, 
Stay with my spirit until I go 
To be the boy that I used to know. 

H. C. BuNNER, in "Rowen." 



ILLUSTRATIOJ^S 



THACKERAY AND THE BOY P) 

THE boy's mother Fact 

ST. JOHN'S CHAPEL AND PARK 

THE boy's uncle JOHN 

THE BOY IN KILTS 

THE BOY PROMOTED TO TROUSERS 

"CRIED, BECAUSE HE HAD BEEN KISSED" . . . 

"GOOD-MORNING, BOYS " 

PLAYING "SCHOOL" 

THE boy's scotch GRANDFATHER 

THE HOUSE OF THE BOY's GRANDFATHER — CORNER 

OF HUDSON AND NORTH MOORE STREETS . . . 

"always in the "WAY" 

READY FOR A NEW-YEAR'S CALL 

A new-year's CALL 

TOM RILEY'S LIBERTY-POLE 

the boy always CLIMBED OVER 

THE CHIEF ENGINEER 

"MRS. ROBERTSON DESCENDED IN FORCE UPON THE 

DEVOTED band" , . 

THE BOY AS VIRGUSflUS 

JOHNNY ROBERTSON 

JANE PURDY 

JOE STUART 



ontispiece 
■ rg p- 4 
6 
8 
10 
13 
14 
16 
18 
20 



24 
26 
28 
30 
32 
34 

86 
38 
40 
42 
44 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



BOB HENDRICKS Facing p. 46 

48 
56 
62 
64 
68 
74 
76 
80 
82 
84 
87 



MUSIC LESSONS 

THE boy's father 

WHISKIE 

PUNCH 

MOP AND HIS MASTER 

ROY AND HIS MASTER 

ROY 

"HE TRIES VERY HARD TO LOOK PLEASANT" 

ROY 

THE WAITING THREE 

MOP 



INTRODUCTOEY NOTE 



The papers upon which this volume is founded — 
published here by the courtesy of The Century Com- 
pany — appeared originally in the columns of St. 
JVicholas. They have been reconstructed and rear- 
ranged, and not a little new matter has been added. 

The portraits are all from life. That of The Boy's 
Scottish grandfather, facing page 20, is from a photo- 
graph by Sir David Brewster, taken in St. Andrews 
in 1846 or 1847. The subject sat in his own garden, 
blinking at the sun for many minutes, in front of 
the camera, when tradition says that his patience 
became exhausted and the artist permitted him to 
move. The Boy distinctly remembers the great in- 
terest the picture excited when it first reached this 
country. 

Behind the tree in the extreme left of the view of 
The Boy's Scottish- American grandfather's house in 
New York, facing page 22, may be seen a portion of 
the home of Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in 1843 or 
1844, some years earlier than the period of " The 



X INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

Story of a Bad Boy." Warm and constant friends 
— as men — for upwards of a quarter of a century, it 
is rather a curious coincidence that the boys — as 
boys — should have been near neighbors, although 
they did not know each other then, nor do they re- 
member the fact. 

The histories of " A Boy I Knew " and the " Four 
Dogs " are absolutely true, from beginning to end ; 
nothing has been invented; no incident has been 
palliated or elaborated. The author hopes that the 
volume may interest the boys and girls he does not 
know as much as it has interested him. He has 
read it more than once ; he has laughed over it, and 
he has cried over it; it has appealed to him in a 
peculiar way. But then, he knew The Dogs, and he 
knew The Boy ! 

L. H. 



A BOY I KNEW 



A BOY I KNEW 



HE was not a very good boy, or a very bad bo}'', 
or a very bright boy, or an unusual boy in any 
way. He was just a boy ; and very often he for- 
gets that he is not a boy now. "Whatever there may 
be about The Boy that is commendable he owes to 
his father and to his mother; and he feels that he 
should not be held responsible for that. 

His mother was the most generous and the most 
unselfish of human beings. She was always thinking 
of somebody else — always doing for others. To her 
it was blessed to give, and it was not very pleasant 
to receive. "When she bought anything, The Boy's 
stereotyped query was, " Who is to have it ?" When 
anything was bought for her, her own invariable 
remark was, "What on earth shall I do with it?" 
When The Boy came to her, one summer morn- 
ing, she looked upon him as a gift from Heaven ; 
and when she was told that it was a boy, and 
not a bad -looking or a bad - conditioned boy, her 



4 A BOY I KNEW 

first words were, " What on earth shall I do with 
it?" 

She found plenty "to do with it" before she got 
through with it, more than forty years afterwards ; 
and The Boy has every reason to believe that she 
never regretted the gift. Indeed, she once told him, 
late in her life, that he had never made her cry ! 
What better benediction can a boy have than that ? 

The Boy's father was a scholar, and a ripe and 
good one. Self-made and self-taught, he began the 
serious struggle of life when he was merely a boy 
himself; and reading, and writing, and speUing, and 
languages, and mathematics came to him by nature. 
He acquired by slow degrees a fine library, and out 
of it a vast amount of information. He never bought 
a book that he did not read, and he never read a book 
unless he considered it worth buying and worth keep- 
ing. Languages and mathematics were his particular 
delight. When he was tired he rested himself by the 
solving of a geometrical problem. He studied his 
Bible in Latin, in Greek, in Hebrew, and he had no 
small smattering of Sanskrit. His chief recreation, 
on a Sunday afternoon or on a long summer evening, 
was a walk with The Boy among the Hudson River 
docks, when the business of the day, or the week, was 
over and the ship was left in charge of some old 
quartermaster or third mate. To these sailors the 
father would talk in each sailor's own tongue, whether 




THE BOY !^ MOTHER 



A BOY I KNEW 5 

it were Dutch or Danish, Spanish or Swedish, Kus- 
sian or Prussian, or ^jpatois of something else, always 
to the great wonderment of The Boy, who to this 
day, after many years of foreign travel, knows little 
more of French than '■'■ Combien f and little more of 
Italian than ''''Tropjpo caro^ "Why none of these 
qualities of mind came to The Boy by direct descent 
he does not know. He only knows that he did in- 
herit from his parent, in an intellectual way, a sense 
of humor, a love for books — as books — and a certain 
respect for the men by whom books are written. 

It seemed to The Boy that his father knew every- 
thing. Any question upon any subject was sure to 
bring a prompt, intelligent, and intelligible answer; 
and, usually, an answer followed by a question, on the 
father's part, which made The Boy think the matter 
out for himself. 

The Boy was always a little bit afraid of his 
father, while he loved and respected hira. He be- 
lieved everything his father told him, because his 
father never fooled him but once, and that was 
about Santa Glaus ! 

When his father said, "Do this," it was done. 
When his father told him to go or to come, he went 
or he came. And yet he never felt the weight of his 
father's hand, except in the way of kindness ; and, as 
he looks back upon his boyhood and his manhood, he 
cannot recall an angry or a hasty word or a rebuke 



6 A BOY I KNEW 

that was not merited and kindly bestowed. Ilis 
father, like the true Scotchman he was, never praised 
him ; but he never blamed him — except for cause. 

The Boy has no recollection of his first tooth, but 
he remembers his first toothache as distinctly as he 
remembers his latest ; and he could not quite under- 
stand then why, when The Boy cried over that raging 
molar, the father walked the floor and seemed to 
suffer from it even more than did The Boy ; or why, 
when The Boy had a sore throat, the father always 
had symptoms of bronchitis or quinsy. 

The father, alas ! did not live long enough to find 
out whether The Boy was to amount to much or not ; 
and while The Boy is proud of the fact that he is his 
father's son, he would be prouder still if he could 
think that he had done something to make his father 
proud of him. 

From his father The Boy received many things 
besides birth and education ; many things better than 
pocket-money or a fixed sum per annum ; but, best 
of all, the father taught The Boy never to cut a 
string. The Boy has pulled various cords during his 
uneventful life, but he has untied them all. Some 
of the knots have been difficult and perplexing, and 
the contents of the bundles, generally, have been of 
little import when they have been revealed ; but he 
saved the strings unbroken, and invariably he has 
found those strings of great help to him in the proper 



A BOY I KNEW 7 

fastening of the next package he has had occasion 
to send away. 

The father had that strong sense of humor which 
Dr. Johnson — who had no sense of humor what- 
ever — denied to all Scotchmen. No surgical opera- 
tion was necessary to put one of Sydney Smith's 
jokes into the father's head, or to keep it there. His 
own jokes were as original as they were harmless, 
and they were as delightful as was his quick appre- 
ciation of the jokes of other persons. 

A long siege with a certain bicuspid had left The 
Boy, one early spring day, with a broken spirit and 
a swollen face. The father was going, that morning, 
to attend the funeral of his old friend, Dr. McPher- 
son, and, before he left the house, he asked The Boy 
what should be brought back to him as a solace. 
"Without hesitation, a brick of maple sugar was de- 
manded — a very strange request, certainly, from a 
person in that peculiar condition of invalidism, and 
one which appealed strongly to the father's own 
sense of the ridiculous. 

When the father returned, at dinner-time, he carried 
the brick, enveloped in many series of papers, begin- 
ning with the coarsest kind and ending with the finest 
kind ; and each of the wrappers was fastened with 
its own particular bit of cord or ribbon, all of them 
tied in the hardest of hard knots. The process of 
disentanglement was long and laborious, but it was 



8 A BOY I KNEW 

persistently performed; and when the brick was 
revealed, lo ! it was just a brick — not of maple sugar, 
but a plain, ordinary, red-clay, building brick which 
he had taken from some pile of similar bricks on his 
way up town. The disappointment was not very 
bitter, for The Boy knew that something else was 
coming; and he realized that it was the First of 
April and that he had been April-fooled ! The some- 
thing else, he remembers, was that most amusing 
of all amusing books, Phoenixiana^ then just pub- 
lished, and over it he forgot his toothache, but not 
his maple sugar. All this happened when he was 
about twelve years of age, and he has ever since 
associated " Squibob " with the sweet sap of the 
maple, never with raging teeth. 

It was necessary, however, to get even with the 
father, not an easy matter, as The Boy well knew ; 
and he consulted his uncle John, who advised patient 
waiting. The father, he said, was absolutely de- 
voted to The Commercial Advertiser, which he read 
every day from frontispiece to end, market reports, 
book notices, obituary notices, advertisements, and 
all; and if The Boy could hold himself in for a 
whole year his uncle John thought it would be 
worth it. The Commercial Advertiser of that date 
was put safely away for a twelvemonth, and on the 
First of April next it was produced, carefully folded 
and properly dampened, and was placed by the side 




THE BOY S UNCLE JOHN 



A BOY I KNEW 9 

of the fathers plate ; the mother and the son making 
no remark, but eagerly awaiting the result. The 
journal was vigorously scanned ; no item of news or 
of business import was missed until the reader came 
to the funeral announcements on the third page. 
Then he looked at the top of the paper, through his 
spectacles, and then he looked, over his spectacles, at 
The Boy; and he made but one observation. The 
subject was never referred to afterwards between 
them. But he looked at the date of the paper, and 
he looked at The Boy ; and he said : " My son, I see 
that old Dr. McPherson is dead again !" 

The Boy was red-headed and long-nosed, even from 
the beginning — a shy, introspective, self-conscious 
little boy, made peculiarly familiar with his personal 
defects by constant remarks that his hair was red and 
that his nose was long. At school, for years, he was 
known familiarly as " Kuf us," " Eed-Head," " Carrot- 
Top," or " Nosey," and at home it was almost as bad. 

His mother, married at nineteen, was the eldest of 
a family of nine children, and many of The Boy's 
aunts and uncles were but a few years his senior, and 
were his daily, familiar companions. He was the 
only member of his own generation for a long time. 
There was a constant fear, upon the part of the elders, 
that he was likel}'' to be spoiled, and consequently the 
rod of verbal castigation was rarely spared. He was 
never praised, nor petted, nor coddled ; and he was 



10 A BOY I KNEW 

taught to look upon himself as a youth hairily and 
nasally deformed and mentally of but little wit. He 
was always falling down, or dropping things. He 
was always getting into the way, and he could not 
learn to spell correctly or to cipher at all. He was 
never in his mother's way, however, and he was 
never made to feel so. But nobody except The Boy 
knows of the agony which the rest of the family, 
unconsciously, and with no thought of hurting his 
feelings, caused him by the fun they poked at his 
nose, at his fier}'- locks, and at his unhandiness. He 
fancied that passers-by pitied him as he walked or 
played in the streets, and he sincerely pitied himself 
as a youth destined to grow up into an awkward, 
tactless, stupid man, at whom the world would laugh 
so long as his life lasted. 

An unusual and unfortunate accident to his nose 
when he was eight or ten years old served to ac- 
centuate his unhappiness. The young people were 
making molasses candy one night in the kitchen of 
his maternal grandfather's house — the aunts and 
the uncles, some of the neighbors' children, and The 
Boy — and the half of a lemon, used for flavoring 
purposes, was dropped as it was squeezed by careless 
hands — very likely The Boy's own — into the boiling 
syrup. It was fished out and put, still full of the 
syrup, upon a convenient saucer, where it remained, 
an exceedingly fragrant object. After the odor had 




TIIK, i;OY IX KII,T8 



A BOY I KNEW 11 

been inhaled by one or two of the party, The Boy 
was tempted to " take a smell of it " ; when an un- 
cle, boylike, ducked the luckless nose into the still 
simmering lemonful. The result was terrible. Red- 
hot sealing-wax could not have done more damage 
to the tender, sensitive feature. 

The Boy carried his nose in a sling for many 
weeks, and the bandage, naturally, twisted the nose 
to one side. It did not recover its natural tint for a 
long time, and the poor little heart was nearly broken 
at the thought of the fresh disfigurement. The Boy 
felt that he had not only an unusually long nose, but 
a nose that was crooked and would always be as red 
as his hair. 

He does not remember what was done to his un- 
cle. But the uncle was for half a century The Boy's 
best and most faithful of friends. And The Boy 
forgave him long, long ago. 

The Boy's first act of self-reliance and of conscious 
self-dependence was a very happy moment in his 
young life ; and it consisted in his being able to step 
over the nursery fender, all alone, and to toast his 
own shins thereby, without falling into the fire. His 
first realization of " getting big " came to him about 
the same time, and with a mingled shock of pain 
and pleasure, when he discovered that he could not 
walk under the high kitchen-table without bumping 
his head. He tried it very often before he learned 



12 A BOY I KNEW 

to go around that article of furniture, on his way 
from the clothes-rack, which was his tent when he 
camped out on rainy days, to the sink, which was 
his oasis in the desert of the basement floor. This 
kitchen was a favorite playground of The Boy, and 
about that kitchen-table centre many of the happiest 
of his early reminiscences. Ann Hughes, the cook, 
was very good to The Boy. She told him stories, 
and taught him riddles, all about a certain " Miss 
Petticoat," who wore a white petticoat, and who 
had a red nose, and about whom there still lingers a 
queer, contradictory legend to the effect that "the 
longer she stands the shorter she grows." The Boy 
always felt that, on account of her nose, there was a 
peculiar bond of sympathy between little Miss Net- 
ticoat and himself. 

As he was all boy in his games, he would never 
cherish anything but a boy-doll, generally a High- 
lander, in kilts and with a glengarry, that came off ! 
And although he became foreman of a juvenile hook- 
and-ladder company before he was five, and would 
not play with girls at all, he had one peculiar femi- 
nine weakness. His grand passion was Avashing and 
ironing. And Ann Hughes used to let him do all 
the laundry-work connected with the wash-rags and 
his own pocket-handkerchiefs, into which, regularly, 
every Wednesday, he burned little brown holes with 
the toy flat - iron, which would get too hot. But 




THE BOY PKU.MOTED TO TROUSEKS 



A BOY I KNEW 13 

Johnny Kobertson and Joe Stuart and the other 
boys, and even the uncles and the aunts, never knevr 
anything about that — unless Ann Hughes gave it 
away ! 

The Boy seems to have developed, very early in 
life, a fondness for new clothes — a fondness which 
his wife sometimes thinks he has quite outgrown. It 
is recorded that almost his first plainly spoken words 
were " Coat and hat," uttered upon his promotion 
into a more boyish apparel than the caps and frocks 
of his infancy. And he remembers very distinctly 
his first pair of long trousers, and the impression they 
made upon him, in more ways than one. They were 
a black-and-white check, and to them Avas attached 
that especially manly article, the suspender. They 
were originally worn in celebration of the birth 
of the New Year, in 1848 or 1849, and The Boy 
went to his father's store in Hudson Street, New 
York, to exhibit them on the next business -day 
thereafter. Naturally they excited much comment, 
and were the subject of sincere congratulation. And 
two young clerks of his father. The Boy's uncles, 
amused themselves, and The Boy, by playing with 
him a then popular game called " Squails." They 
put The Boy, seated, on a long counter, and they slid 
him, backward and forward between them, with 
great skill and no little force. But, before the 
championship was decided, The Boy's mother broke 



14 A BOY I KNEW 

up the game, boxed the ears of the players, and car- 
ried the human disk home in disgrace ; pressing as 
she went, and not very gentl}^ the seat of The Boy's 
trousers with the palm of her hand ! 

He remembers nothing more about the trousers, 
except the fact that for a time he was allowed to 
appear in them on Sundays and holidays only, and 
that he was deeply chagrined at having to go back 
to knickerbockers at school and at play. 

The Boy's first boots were of about this same era. 
They were what were then known as " Welling- 
tons," and they had legs. The legs had red leather 
tops, as was the fashion in those days, and the boots 
were pulled on with straps. They were always 
taken off with the aid of the boot-jack of The Boy's 
father, although they could have been removed much 
more easily without the use of that instrument. 
Great was the day when The Boy first wore his first 
boots to school ; and great his delight at the sensa- 
tion he thought they created when they were ex- 
hibited in the primary department. 

The Boy's first school was a dame's school, kept 
by a Miss or Mrs. Harrison, in Harrison Street, near 
the Hudson Street house in which he was born. He 
was the smallest child in the establishment, and 
probably a pet of the larger girls, for he remembers 
going home to his mother in tears, because one of 
them had kissed him behind the class-room door. 







ijt^ 



V 



CKIED, BECAUSE HE HAD BEEN KISSED' 



A BOY I KNEW 15 

He saw her often, in later years, but she never tried 
to do it again ! 

At that school he met his first love, one Phoebe 
Hawkins, a very sweet, pretty girl, as he recalls her, 
and, of course, considerably his senior. How far he 
had advanced in the spelling of proper names at that 
period is shown by the well-authenticated fact that 
he put himself on record, once as '* loving his love 
with an F, because she was Feeby !" 

Poor Phoebe Hawkins died before she was out of 
her teens. The family moved to Poughkeepsie when 
The Boy was ten or twelve, and his mother and he 
went there one day from Red Hook, which was 
their summer home, to call upon his love. When 
they asked, at the railroad-station, where the Haw- 
kinses lived and how they could find the house, they 
were told that the carriages for the funeral would 
meet the next train. And, utterly unprepared for 
such a greeting, for at latest accounts she had been 
in perfect health, they stood, with her friends, by the 
side of Phoebe's open grave. 

In his mind's eye The Boy, at the end of forty 
years, can see it all ; and his childish grief is still 
fresh in his memory. He had lost a bird and a cat 
who were very dear to his heart, but death had 
never before seemed so real to him; never before 
had it come so near home. He never played " fu- 
neral " again. 



16 A BOY I KNEW 

In 1851 or 1852 The Boy went to another dame's 
school. It was kept by Miss Kilpatrick, on Franklin 
or North Moore Street. From this, as he grew in 
years, he was sent to the Primary Department of the 
North Moore Street Public School, at the corner of 
West Broadway, where he remained three weeks, 
and where he contracted a whooping-cough which 
lasted him three months. The other boys used to 
throw his hat upon an awning in the neighborhood, 
and then throw their own hats up under the awning 
in order to bounce The Boy's hat off — an amuse- 
ment for which he never much cared. They were 
not very nice boys, anyway, especially Avhen they 
made fun of his maternal grandfather, who was a 
trustee of the school, and who sometimes noticed 
The Boy after the morning prayers were said. The 
grandfather was very popular in the school. He 
came in every day, stepped upon the raised platform 
at the principal's desk, and said in his broad Scotch, 
" Good morning, boys !" to which the entire body of 
pupils, at the top of their lungs, and with one voice, 
replied, ^'G-o-o-d morning, Mr. Scott P'' This was con- 
sidered a great feature in the school ; and strangers 
used to come from all over the city to witness it. 
Somehow it made The Boy a little bit ashamed ; he 
does not know why. He would have liked it well 
enough, and been touched by it, too, if it had been 
some other boy's grandfather. The Boy's father 




"good MOUNING, r.OYS 



A BOY I KNEW 17 

was present once — The Boy's first day ; but when he 
discovered that the President of the Board of Trus- 
tees was going to call on him for a speech he ran 
away ; and The Boy would have given all his little 
possessions to have run after him. The Boy knew 
then, as well as he knows now, how his father felt ; 
and he thinks of that occasion every time he runs 
away from some after-dinner or occasional speech 
which he, himself, is called upon to make. 

After his North Moore Street experiences The Boy 
was sent to study under men teachers in boys' 
schools ; and he considered then that he was grown 
up. 

The Boy, as has been said, was born without the 
sense of spell. The Rule of Three, it puzzled hira, 
and fractions were as bad ; and the proper placing 
of e and i, or i and e, the doubling of letters in the 
middle of words, and how to treat the addition of a 
suflix in " y " or " tion " " almost drove him mad," 
from his childhood up. He hated to go to school, 
but he loved to play school ; and when Johnny 
Robertson and he were not conducting a pompous, 
public funeral — a certain oblong hat-brush, with a 
rosewood back, studded with brass tacks, serving as 
a coffin, in which lay the body of Henry Clay, Dan- 
iel "Webster, or the Duke of Wellington, all of whom 
died when Johnny and The Boy were about eight 
years old — they were teaching each other the three 

2 



18 A BOY I KNEW 

immortal and exceedingly trying " K's " — reading, 
'riting, and 'ritlimetic — in a play-sctiool. Their favor- 
ite spelling-book was a certain old cook-book, dis- 
carded by the head of the kitchen, and considered 
all that was necessary for their educational purpose. 
From this, one afternoon, Johnnie gave out " Dough- 
nut," with the following surprising result. Conscious 
of the puzzling presence of certain silent consonants 
and vowels, The Boy thus set it down: "D-0, dough, 
N-0-U-G-H-T, nut — doughnut!" and he went up 
head in a class of one, neither teacher nor pupil per- 
ceiving the marvellous transposition. 

All The Boy's religious training was received at 
home, and almost his first text -book was "The 
Shorter Catechism," which, he confesses, he hated 
with all his little might. He had to learn and recite 
the answers to those awful questions as soon as he 
could recite at all, and, for years, without the slight- 
est comprehension as to what it was all about. Even 
to this day he cannot tell just what " Effectual Call- 
ing," or " Justification," is ; and I am sure that he 
slied more tears over " Effectual Calling " than would 
blot out the record of any number of infantile sins. 
He made up his youthful mind that if he could not 
be saved without " Effectual Calling " — whatever 
that was — he did not want to be saved at all. But 
he has thought better of it since. 

It is proper to affirm here that The Boy did not 




PLAYING "school" 



A BOY I KNEW 19 

acquire his occasional swear -words from "The 
Shorter Catechism." They were born in him, as 
a fragment of Original Sin; and they came out 
of him innocently and unwittingly, and only for 
purposes of proper emphasis, long before the days 
of "Justification," and even before he knew his 
A, B, C's. 

His earliest visit to Scotland was made when he 
was but four or five years of age, and long before he 
had assumed the dignity of trousers, or had been sent 
to school. His father had gone to the old home at 
St. Andrews hurriedly, upon the receipt of the news 
of the serious illness of The Boy's grandmother, who 
died before they reached her. Naturally, The Boy 
has little recollection of that sad month of December,, 
spent in his grandfather's house, except that it was 
sad. The weather was cold and wet ; the house, even 
under ordinary circumstances, could not have been 
a very cheerful one for a youngster who had no 
companions of his own age. It looked out upon the 
German Ocean — which at that time of the year was 
always in a rage, or in the sulks — and it was called 
"Peep o' Day," because it received the very first 
rays of the sun as he rose upon the British Isles. 

The Boy's chief amusement Avas the feeding of 
" flour-scones " and oat - cakes to an old goat, who 
lived in the neighborhood, and in daily walks with 
his grandfather, who seemed to find some little com- 



20 A BOY I KNEW 

fort and entertainment in the lad's childish prattle. 
He was then almost the only grandchild ; and the 
old man was very proud of his manner and appear- 
ance, and particularly amused at certain gigantic 
efforts on The Boy's part to adapt his own short legs 
to the strides of his senior's long ones. 

After they had interviewed the goat, and had 
Avatched the wrecks with which the wild shore was 
strewn, and had inspected the Castle in ruins, and 
the ruins of the Cathedral, The Boy would be shown 
his grandmother's new-made grave, and his own name 
in full — a common name in the family — upon the 
family tomb in the old kirk-yard ; all of which must 
have been very cheering to The Boy ; although he 
could not read it for himself. And then, which was 
better, they would stand, hand in hand, for a long 
time in front of a certain candy -shop window, in 
which Avas displayed a little regiment of lead soldiers, 
marching in double file towards an imposing and im- 
pregnable tin fortress on the heights of barley-sugar. 
Of this spectacle they never tired ; and they used to 
discuss how The Boy would arrange them if they 
belonged to him ; with a sneaking hope on The Boy's 
part that, some day, they were to be his very own. 

At the urgent request of the grandfather, the 
American contingent remained in St. Andrews until 
the end of the year; and The Boy still remembers 
vividly, and he will never forget, the dismal failure 




THE BOY S SCOTCH GKANDFATIIEU 



A BOY I KNEW 21 

of " Auld Lang Syne " as it was sung by the family, 
with clasped hands, as the clock struck and the New 
Year began. He sat up for the occasion — or, rather, 
was waked up for the occasion ; and of all that fam- 
ily group he has been, for a decade or more, the only 
survivor. The mother of the house "was but lately 
dead ; the eldest son, and his son, were going, the 
next day, to the other side of the world ; and every 
voice broke before the familiar verse came to an end. 

As The Boy went off to his bed he was told that 
his grandfather had something for him, and he stood 
at his knee to receive — a Bible ! That it was to be 
the lead soldiers and the tin citadel he never for a 
moment doubted ; and the surprise and disappoint- 
ment were very great. He seems to have had pres- 
ence of mind enough to conceal his feelings, and to 
kiss and thank the dear old man for his gift. But 
as be climbed slowly up the stairs, in front of his 
mother, and with his Bible under his arm, she over- 
heard him sob to himself, and murmur, in his great 
disgust: "Well, he has given me a book! And I 
wonder how in thunder he thinks I am going to read 
his damned Scotch !" 

This display of precocious profanity and of innate 
patriotism, upon the part of a child who could not 
read at all, gave unqualified pleasure to the old gen- 
tleman, and he never tired of telling the story as long 
as he lived. 



32 A BOY I KNEW 

The Boy never saw the grandfather again. He 
had gone to the kirk-yard, to stay, before the next 
visit to St. Andrews was made ; and now that kirk- 
yard holds every one of The Boy's name and blood 
who is left in the town. 

The Boy was taught, from the earliest awakening 
of his reasoning powers, that truth was to be told 
and to be respected, and that nothing was more 
wicked or more ungentlemanly than a broken prom- 
ise. He learned very early to do as he was told, and 
not to do, under any consideration, what he had said 
he would not do. Upon this last point he was al- 
most morbidly conscientious, although once, literally, 
he " beat about the bush." His aunt Margaret, al- 
ways devoted to plants and to flowers, had, on the 
back stoop of his grandfather's house, a little grove of 
orange and lemon trees, in pots. Some of these were 
usually in fruit or in flower, and the fruit to The 
Boy was a great temptation. He was very fond of 
oranges, and it seemed to him that a " home-made " 
orange, which he had never tasted, must be much bet- 
ter than a grocer's orange ; as home-made cake was 
certainly preferable, even to the wonderful cakes made 
by the professional Mrs. Milderberger. He watched 
those little green oranges from day to day, as they 
gradually grew big and yellow in the sun. He prom- 
ised faithfully that he would not pick any of them, 
but he had a notion that some of them might drop 



A BOY I KNEW 23 

off. He never shook the trees, because he said he 
would not. But he shook the stoop ! And he hung 
about the bush, which he was too honest to beat. 
One unusually tempting orange, which he had known 
from its bud-hood, finally overcame him. He did 
not pick it off, he did not shake it off ; he compro- 
mised with his conscience by lying flat on his back 
and biting off a piece of it. It was not a very good 
action, nor was it a very good orange, and for that 
reason, perhaps, he went home immediately and told 
on himself. He told his mother. He did not tell 
his aunt Margaret. His mother did not seem to be 
as much shocked at his conduct as he was. But, in 
her own quiet way, she gave him to understand that 
promises were not made to be cracked any more 
than they were made to be broken — that he had 
been false to himself in heart, if not in deed, and 
that he must go back and make it " all right" with 
his aunt Margaret. She did not seem to be very 
much shocked, either; he could not tell why. But 
they punished The Boy. They made him eat the 
rest of the orange ! 

He lost all subsequent interest in that tropical 
glade, and he has never cared much for domestic 
oranges since. 

Among the many bumps which are still conspicu- 
ously absent in The Boy's phrenological develop- 
ment are the bumps of Music and Locality. He 



24 A BOY I KNEW 

whistled as soon as he acquired front teeth ; and he 
has been singing " God Save the Queen " at the St. 
Andrew's Society dinners, on November the 30th, 
ever since he came of age. But that is as far as his 
sense of harmony goes. He took music-lessons for 
three quarters, and then his mother gave it up in 
despair. The instrument was a piano. The Boy 
could not stretch an octave with his right hand, the 
little finger of which had been broken by a shinny- 
stick ; and he could not do anything whatever with 
his left hand. He was constantly dropping his bass- 
notes, which, he said, were " understood." And 
even Miss Ferguson — most patient of teachers — de- 
clared that it was of no use. 

The piano to The Boy has been the most offensive 
of instruments ever since. And when his mother's 
old piano, graceful in form, and with curved legs 
which are still greatly admired, lost its tone, and was 
transformed into a sideboard, he felt, for the first 
time, that music had charms. 

He had to practise half an hour a day, by a thirty- 
minute sand-glass that could not be set ahead ; and 
he shed tears enough over " The Carnival of Venice " 
to have raised the tide in the Grand Canal. They 
blurred the sharps and the flats on the music- 
books — those tears; they ran the crotchets and 
the quavers together, and, rolling down his cheeks, 
they even splashed upon his not very clean little 




AIRWAYS IN THE WAY 



A BOY I KNEW 25 

hands ; and, literally, they covered the keys with 
mud. 

Another serious trial to The Boy was dancing- 
school. In the first place, he could not turn round 
witliout becoming dizzy ; in the second place, he 
could not learn the steps to turn round with ; and in 
the third place, when he did dance he had to dance 
with a girl ! There was not a boy in all Charraud's, 
or in all Dod worth's, who could escort a girl back to 
her seat, after the dance was over, in better time, or 
make his "thank-you bow" with less delay. His 
only voluntary terpsichorean effort at a party was 
the march to supper; and the only steps he ever 
took with anything like success were during the 
promenade in the lancers. In "hands-all-round" 
he invariably started with the wrong hand ; and if 
in the set there were girls big enough to wear long 
dresses, he never failed to tear such out at the gath- 
ers. If anybody fell down in the polka it was al- 
V7a.js The Boy ; and if anybody bumped into any- 
body else, The Boy was alwaj^s the bumper, unless 
his partner could hold him up and steer him straight. 

Games, at parties, he enjoyed more than dancing, 
although he did not care very much for " Pillows 
and Keys," until he became courageous enough to 
kneel before somebody except his maiden aunts. 
"Porter" was less embarrassing, because, when the 
door was shut, nobody but the little girl who called 



26 A BOY I KNEW 

him but could tell whether he kissed her or not. All 
this happened a long time ago ! 

The only social function in which The Boy took 
any interest whatever was the making of New- 
Year's calls. 'Not that he cared to make New- Year's 
calls in themselves, but because he wanted to make 
more New- Year's calls than were made by any other 
boy. His "list," based upon last year's list, was 
commenced about February 1 ; and it contained the 
names of every person whom The Boy knew, or 
thought he knew, whether that person knew The 
Boy or not, from Mrs. Penrice, who boarded oppo- 
site the Bowling Green, to the Leggats and the 
Faures, who lived near Washington Parade Ground, 
the extreme social limits of his city in those days. 
He usually began by making a formal call upon his 
own mother, who allowed him to taste the pickled 
oysters as early as ten in the morning ; and he in- 
variably wound up by calling upon Ann Hughes in 
the kitchen, where he met the soap-fat man, who 
was above his profession, and likewise the sexton of 
Ann Hughes's church, who generally came with 
Billy, the barber on the corner of Franklin Street. 
There were certain calls The Boy always made with 
his father, during which he did not partake of pic- 
kled oysters ; but he had pickled oysters everywhere 
else ; and they never seemed to do him any serious 
harm. 




READY FOH A KKW-YEAK S CALL 



A BOY I KNEW 27 

The Boy, if possible, kept liis new overcoat until 
New Year's Day — and be never left it in tlie hall 
when he called! He always wore new green kid 
gloves — why green ? — fastened at the wrists with a 
single hook and eye ; and he never took off his kid 
gloves when he called, except on that particular New 
Year's Day when his aunt Charlotte gave him the 
bloodstone seal-ring, which, at first, was too big for 
his little finger, — the only finger on which a seal- 
ring could be worn — and had to be made tempo- 
rarily smaller with a piece of string. 

"When he received, the next New Year, new studs 
and a scarf-pin — all bloodstones, to match the ring 
— he exhibited no little ingenuity of toilet in dis- 
playing them both, because studs are hardly visible 
when one wears a scarf, unless the scarf is kept out 
of the perpendicular by stuffing one end of it into 
the sleeve of a jacket ; which requires constant at- 
tention and a good deal of bodily contortion. 

When The Boy met Johnny Robertson or Joe 
Stuart making calls, they never recognized each 
other, except when they were calling together, which 
did not often occur. It was an important rule in 
their social code to appear as strangers in-doors, al- 
though they would wait for each other outside, and 
compare lists. When they did present themselves 
collectively in any drawing-room, one hoy — usually 
The Boy's cousin Lew — was detailed to whisper " T. 



28 A BOY I KNEW 

T." when he considered that the proper limit of the 
call was reached. " T. T." stood for " Time to Trav- 
el" ; and at the signal all conversation was abruptly 
interrupted, and the party trooped out in single file. 
The idea was not original with the boys. It was 
borrowed from the hook-and-ladder company, which 
made all its calls in a body, and in two of Kipp and 
Brown's stages, hired for the entire day. The boys 
always walked. 

The great drawbacks to the custom of making 
New- Year's calls were the calls which had to be 
made after the day's hard work was supposed to be 
over, and when The Boy and his father, returning 
home very tired, were told that they must call upon 
Mrs. Somebody, and upon Mrs. Somebody-else, whom 
they had neglected to visit, because the husbands and 
the sons of these ladies had called upon the mother 
of The Boy. New Year's Day was not the shortest 
day of the year, by any means, but it was absolutely 
necessary to return the Somebody's call, no matter 
how late the hour, or how tired the victims of the 
social law. And it bored the ladies of the Some- 
body household as much as it bored the father and 
The Boy. 

The Boy was always getting lost. The very first 
time he went out alone he got lost ! Told not to go 
off the block, he Avalked as far as the corner of 
Leonard Street, put his arm around the lamp-post, 




A NEW-YEAIl S CALL 



A BOY I KNEW 29 

swung himself in a circle, had his head turned the 
wrong way, and marched off, at a right angle, along 
the side street, with no home visible anywhere, and 
not a familiar sign in sight. A shij) at sea -without 
a rudder, a solitary wanderer in the Great American 
Desert without a compass, could not have been more 
utterly astray. The Boy was so demoralized that 
he forgot his name and address ; and when a kindly 
policeman picked him up, and carried him over the 
way, to the Leonard Street station-house for identifi- 
cation, he felt as if the end of everything had come. 
It was bad enough to be arrested, but how was he 
to satisfy his own conscience, and explain matters to 
his mother, when it was discovered that he had 
broken his solemn promise, and crossed the street ? 
He had no pocket-handkerchief ; and he remembers 
that he spoiled the long silk streamers of his Glen- 
garry bonnet by wiping his eyes upon them. He was 
recognized by his Forty-second-plaid gingham frock, 
a familiar object in the neighborhood, and he was 
carried back to his parents, who had not had time to 
miss him, and who, consequently, were not distracted. 
He lost nothing by the adventure but himself, his 
self-respect, a pint of tears — and one shoe. 

He was afterwards lost in Greenwich Street, having 
gone there on the back step of an ice-cart ; and once 
he was conveyed as far as the Hudson Kiver Kailroad 
Depot, at Chambers Street, on his sled, which he had 



30 A BOY I KNEW 

hitched to the milkman's wagon, and could not untie. 
This was very serious, indeed ; for The Boy realized 
that he had not only lost himself but his sleigh, too. 
Aunt Henrietta found The Boy sitting disconsolately 
in front of "Wall's bake-shop ; but the sleigh did not 
turn up for several days. It was finally discovered, 
badly scratched, in the possession of " The Head of 
the Rovers." 

"The Hounds" and "The Rovers" were rival 
bands of boys, not in The Boy's set, who for many 
years made out-door life miserable to The Boy and 
to his friends. They threw stones and mud at each 
other, and at everybody else ; and The Boy was not 
infrequently blamed for the windows they broke. 
They punched all the little boys who were better 
dressed than they were, and they were even depraved 
enough, and mean enough, to tell the driver every 
time The Boy or Johnny Robertson attempted to 
" cut behind." 

There was also a band of unattached guerillas 
who aspired to be, and often pretended to be, either 
" Hounds " or " Rovers " — they did not care which. 
They always hunted in couples, and if they met The 
Boy alone they asked him to which of the organi- 
zations he himself belonged. If he said he was a 
" Rover," they claimed to be " Hounds," and pounded 
him. If he declared himself in sympathy with the 
" Hounds," they hoisted the " Rovers' " colors, and 




TOM ItlLEY's I.IBKUTY POLE 



A BOY I KNEW 31 

punched him again. If he disclaimed both associa- 
tions, they punched him anyway, on general princi- 
ples. " The Head of the Rovers " was subsequently 
killed, in front of Tom Riley's liberty-pole in Frank- 
lin Street, in a fireman's riot, and " The Chief of the 
Hounds," who had a club-foot, became a respectable 
egg-merchant, with a stand in Washington Market, 
near the Root-beer Woman's place of business, on the 
south side. The Boy met two of the gang near the 
Desbrosses Street Ferry only the other day ; but they 
did not recognize The Boy. 

The only spot where The Boy felt really safe from 
the interference of " The Hounds " and " The Rovers " 
was in St. John's Square, that delightful oasis in the 
desert of brick and mortar and cobble-stones which 
was known as the Fifth Ward. It was a private 
enclosure, bounded on the north by Laight Street, 
on the south by Beach Street, on the east by Yarick 
Street, and on the west by Hudson Street ; and its 
site is now occupied by the great freight-warehouses 
of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad 
Company. 

In the " Fifties," and long before, it was a private 
park, to which only the property owners in its imme- 
diate neighborhood had access. It possessed fine old 
trees, winding gravel-walks, and meadows of grass. 
In the centre was a fountain, whereupon, in the proper 
season, the children were allowed to skate on both 



A BOY I KNEW 33 

how far out, or how scientifically, his left arm was 
extended. It was " One, two, three — and recover " — 
on The Boy's nose! The Boy was a good runner. 
His legs were the only part of his anatomy which 
seemed to him as long as his nose. And his legs 
saved his nose in many a fierce encounter. 

The Boy first had daily admission to St. John's 
Park after the family moved to Hubert Street, vf hen 
The Boy was about ten years old; and for half a 
decade or more it was his happy hunting-ground — 
when he was not kept in school ! It was a particu- 
larly pleasant place in the autumn and winter months ; 
for he could then gather " smoking-beans " and horse- 
chestnuts; and he could roam at will all over the 
grounds without any hateful warning to " Keep Off 
the Grass." 

The old gardener, generally a savage defender of 
the place, who had no sense of humor as it was ex- 
hibited in boy nature, sometimes let the boys rake 
the dead leaves into great heaps and make bonfires 
of them, if the wind happened to be in the right di- 
rection. And then what larks ! The bonfire was a 
house on fire, and the great garden-roller, a very 
heavy affair, was " Engine l^o. 42," with which the 
boys ran to put the fire out. They all shouted as 
loudly and as unnecessarily as real firemen did, in 
those days ; the foreman gave his orders through a 
real trumpet, and one boy had a real fireman's hat 

3 



34 A BOY I KNEW 

with "Engine No. 42" on it. He was chief en- 
gineer, but he did not run with the machine : not 
because he was chief engineer, but because while in 
active motion he could not keep his hat on. It was 
his father's hat, and its extraordinary weight was 
considerably increased by the wads of newspaper 
packed in the lining to make it fit. The chief en- 
gineer held the position for life on the strength of 
the hat, which he would not lend to anybody else. 
The rest of the officers of the company were elected, 
viva voce, every time there was a fire. 

This entertaiment came to an end, like ever3^thing 
else, when the gardener chained the roller to the 
tool-house, after Bob Stuart fell under the machine 
and was rolled so flat that he had to be carried home 
on a stretcher, made of overcoats tied together by 
the sleeves. That is the only recorded instance in 
which the boys, particularly Bob, left the Park with- 
out climbing over. And the bells sounded a "gen- 
eral alarm." The dent made in the path by Bob's 
body was on exhibition until the next snow-storm. 

The favorite amusements in the Park were shinny, 
baseball, one-old-cat, and fires. The Columbia Base- 
ball Club was organized in 1853 or 1854. It had 
nine members, and The Boy was secretary and treas- 
urer. The uniform consisted chiefly of a black leath- 
er belt with the initials B 9 C in white letters, 
hand-painted, and generally turned the wrong way. 




THE CUIKF ENGINEER 



A BOY I KNEW 35 

The first base was an ailantus-tree ; the second base 
was another ailantus-tree ; the third base was a but- 
ton-ball-tree ; the home base was a marble head- 
stone, brought for that purpose from an old burj- 
ing-ground not far away ; and " over the fence " was 
a home-run. A player was caught out on the second 
bounce, and he was " out " if hit by a ball thrown 
at him as he ran. The Boy was put out once by 
a crack on the ear, which put The Boy out very 
much. 

" The Hounds " and " The Eovers " challenged 
" The Columbias " repeatedly. But that was looked 
upon simply as an excuse to get into the Park, and 
the challenges were never accepted. The challeng- 
ers were forced to content themselves with running 
off with the balls which went over the fence ; an ac- 
tion on their part which made home-runs through 
that medium very unpopular and very expensive. 
In the whole history of " The Hounds " and " The 
Rovers," nothing that they pirated was ever returned 
but The Boy's sled. 

Contemporary with the Columbia Baseball Club 
was a so-called " Mind-cultivating Society," organ- 
ized by the undergraduates of McElligott's School, 
in Greene Street. The Boy, as usual, was secretary 
when he was not treasurer. The object was " De- 
bates," but all the debating was done at the business 
meetings, and no mind ever became sufficiently cul- 



36 A BOY I KNEW 

tivated to master the intricacies of parliamentary 
law. The members called it a Secret Society, and 
on their jackets they wore, as conspicuously as pos- 
sible, a badge-pin consisting of a blue enamelled circlet 
containing Greek letters in gold. In a very short 
time the badge-pin was all that was left of the So- 
ciety ; but to this day the secret of the Society has 
never been disclosed. ISTo one ever knew, or will 
ever know, what the Greek letters stood for — not 
even the members themselves. 

The Boy was never a regular member of any fire- 
company, but almost as long as the old Volunteer 
Fire Department existed, he was what was known 
as a " Runner." He was attached, in a sort of bre- 
vet way, to " Pearl Hose No. 28," and, later, to " 11 
Hook and Ladder." He knew all the fire districts 
into which the city was then divided ; his ear was 
always alert, even in the St. John's Park days, for 
the sound of the alarm-bell, and he ran to every fire 
at any hour of the day or night, up to ten o'clock 
P.M. He did not do much when he got to the fire 
but stand around and " holler." But once — a proud 
moment — he helped steer the hook-and-ladder truck 
to a false alarm in Macdougal Street — and once — a 
very proud moment, indeed — he went into a tene- 
ment-house, near Dr. Thompson's church, in Grand 
Street, and carried two negro babies down-stairs in 
his arms. There was no earthly reason why the 






f%. 









1-^ '- I' iSm ^^ 



>:^^--* ^ 




"MRS. KOBKKTSON DESCENDED IN FORCE ITPON THE 
DEVOTED BAND " 



A BOY I KNEW 37 

babies should not have been left in their beds ; and 
the colored family did not like it, because the babies 
caught cold ! But The Boy, for once in his life, 
tasted the delights of self-conscious heroism. 

When The Boy, as a bigger boy, was not running 
to fires he was going to theatres, the greater part of 
his allowance being spent in the box-offices of Bur- 
ton's Chambers Street house, of Brougham's Ly- 
ceum, corner of Broome Street and Broadway, of 
Niblo's, and of Castle Garden. There were no after- 
noon performances in those days, except now and 
then when the Ravels were at Castle Garden ; and 
the admission to pit and galleries was usually two 
shillings — otherwise, twenty- five cents. His first 
play, so far as he remembers, was " The Stranger," 
a play dismal enough to destroy any taste for the 
drama, one would suppose, in any juvenile mind. He 
never cared very much to see " The Stranger " again, 
but nothing that was a play was too deep or too 
heavy for him. He never saw the end of any of the 
more elaborate productions, unless his father took 
him to the theatre (as once in a while he did), for it 
was a strict rule of the house, until The Boy was 
well up in his teens, that he must be in by ten 
o'clock. His father did not ask him where he was 
going, or where he had been ; but the curfew in Hu- 
bert Street tolled at ten. The Boy calculated care- 
fully and exactly how many minutes it took him to 



38 A BOY I KNEW 

run to Hubert Street from Brougham's or from Bur- 
ton's ; and by the middle of the second act his watch 
— a small silver affair with a hunting-case, in which 
he could not keep an uncracked crystal — was always 
in his hand. He never disobeyed his father, and for 
years he never knew what became of Claude Mel- 
notte after he went to the wars ; or if Damon got 
back in time to save Pythias before the curtain fell. 
The Boy, naturally, had a most meagre notion as to 
what all these plays were about, but he enjoyed his 
fragments of them as he rarely enjoys plays now. 
Sometimes, in these days, when the air is bad, and 
plays are worse, and big hats are worse than either, 
he wishes that he were forced to leave the modern 
play-house at nine-forty-five, on pain of no supper 
that night, or twenty lines of " Virgil " the next 
day. 

On very stormy afternoons the boys played thea- 
tre in the large garret of The Boy's Hubert Street 
house ; a convenient closet, with a door and a win- 
dow, serving for the Castle of Elsinore in " Hamlet," 
for the gunroom of the ship in " Black-eyed Susan," 
or for the studio of Phidias in " The Marble Heart," 
as the case might be. " The Brazilian Ape," as re- 
quiring more action than words, was a favorite en- 
tertainment, only they all wanted to play Jocko the 
Ape; and they would have made no little success 
out of the " Lady of Lyons " if any of them had 




-^-r-X,^,.,^'.. 



THE BOY AS VIHGINIUS 



A BOY I KNEW 39 

been willing to play Pauline. Their costumes and 
properties were slight and not always accurate, but 
they could " launch the curse of Rome," and describe 
"two hearts beating as one," in a manner rarely 
equalled on the regular stage. The only thing they 
really lacked was an audience, neither Lizzie Gustin 
nor Ann Hughes ever being able to sit through more 
than one act at a time. When The Boy, as Virgin- 
ius, with his uncle Aleck's sword-cane, stabbed all 
the feathers out of the pillow which represented the 
martyred Yirginia ; and when Joe Stuart, as Fal- 
staff, broke the bottom out of Ann Hughes's clothes- 
basket, the license was revoked, and the season came 
to an untimely end. 

Until the beginning of the weekly, or the fort- 
nightly, sailings of the Collins line of steamers from 
the foot of Canal Street (a spectacle which they never 
missed in any weather), Joe Stuart, Johnny Rob- 
ertson, and The Boy played " The Deerslayer " every 
Saturday in the back-yard of The Boy's house. The 
area-way was Glimmer-glass, in which they fished, 
and on which they canoed ; the back-stoop was Musk- 
rat Castle ; the rabbits were all the wild beasts of the 
Forest ; Johnny was Hawk-Eye, The Boy was Hurry 
Harry, and Joe Stuart was Chingachgook. Their 
only food was half-baked potatoes — sweet potatoes if 
possible — which they cooked themselves and ate rav- 
enously, with butter and salt, if Ann Hughes was 



40 A BOY I KNEW 

amiable, and entirely unseasoned if Ann was dis- 
posed to be disobliging. 

They talked what they fondly believed was the 
dialect of the Delaware tribe, and they were con- 
stantly on the lookout for the approaches of Eiven- 
oak, or the Panther, who were represented by any 
member of the family who chanced to stra}'- into the 
enclosure. They carefully turned their toes in when 
they walked, making so much effort in this matter 
that it took a great deal of dancing-school to get 
their feet back to the " first position " again ; and 
they even painted their faces when they were on the 
war-path. The rabbits had the worst of it ! 

The campaign came to a sudden and disastrous 
conclusion when the hostile tribes, headed by Mrs. 
Robertson, descended in force upon the devoted 
band, because Chingachgook broke one of Hawk- 
Eye's front teeth with an arrow, aimed at the biggest 
of the rabbits, which was crouching by the side of 
the roots of the grape-vine, and playing that he was 
a panther of enormous size. 

Johnny Eobertson and The Boy had one great 
superstition — to wit. Cracks! For some now inex- 
plicable reason they thought it unlucky to step on 
cracks ; and they made daily and hourly spectacles 
of themselves in the streets by the eccentric irregu- 
larity of their gait. 'Now they would take long 
strides, like a pair of ostriches, and now short, quick 




JOHJS'NY ROBERTSON 



A BOY I KNEW 41 

steps, like a couple of robins ; now they would hop 
on both feet, like a brace of sparrows ; now they 
would walk on their heels, now on their toes ; now 
with their toes turned in, now with their toes turned 
out — at right angles, in a splay-footed way; now 
they would walk with their feet crossed, after the 
manner of the hands of very fancy, old-fashioned 
piano-players, skipping from base to treble — over 
cracks. The whole performance would have driven 
a sensitive drill-sergeant or ballet-master to distrac- 
tion. And when they came to a brick sidewalk they 
would go all around the block to avoid it. They 
could cross Hudson Street on the cobblestones with 
great effort, and in great danger of being run over; 
but they could not possibly travel upon a brick pave- 
ment, and avoid the cracks. What would have hap- 
pened to them if they did step on a crack they did 
not exactly know. But, for all that, they never 
stepped on cracks — of their own free will ! 

The Boy's earliest attempts at versification were 
found, the other day, in an old desk, and at the end 
of almost half a century. The copy is in his own 
boyish, ill-spelled print ; and it bears no date. The 
present owner, his aunt Henrietta, well remembers 
the circumstances and the occasion, however, having 
been an active participant in the acts the poem de- 
scribes, although she avers that she had no hand in 
its composition. The original, it seems, was tran- 



43 A BOY I KNEW 

scribed by The Boy upon the cover of a soap-box, 
which served as a head-stone to one of the graves in 
his family burying-ground, situated in the back-yard 
of the Hudson Street house, from which he was taken 
before he was nine years of age. The monument 
stood against the fence, and this is the legend it 
bore — rhyme, rhythm, metre, and orthography being 
carefully preserved : 

"Three little kitens of our old cat 
Were berrid this day in this 

grassplat. 
They came to there deth in 

an old slop pale, 
And after loosing their breth 
They were pulled out by 

the tale. 
These three little kitens have 

returned to their maker, 
And were put in the grave by 

The Boy, 

Undertaker." 

At about this period The Boy oflSciated at the 
funeral of another cat, but in a somewhat more 
exalted capacity. It was the Cranes' cat, at Red 
Hook — a Maltese lad}^ who always had yellow kit- 
tens. The Boy does not remember the cause of the 
cat's death, but he thinks that Uncle Andrew Knox 
ran over her, with the " dyspepsia-wagon " — so called 
because it had no springs. Anyway, the cat died, 




JANE PURDY 



A BOY I KNEW 43 

and had to be buried. The grave was dug in the 
garden of the tavern, near the swinging-gate to the 
stable, and the whole family attended the services. 
Jane Purdy, in a deep crape veil, was the chief 
mourner; The Boy's aunts were pall - bearers, in 
white scarves ; The Boy was the clergyman ; while 
the kittens — who did not look at all like their moth- 
er — were on hand in a funeral basket, with black 
shoestrings tied around their necks. 

Jane was supposed to be the disconsolate widow. 
She certainly looked the part to perfection ; and it 
never occurred to any of them that a cat, with kit- 
tens, could not possibly have left a widow behind 
her. 

The ceremony was most impressive ; the bereaved 
kittens were loud in their grief ; when, suddenly, the 
village-bell tolled for the death of an old gentleman 
whom everybody loved, and the comedy became a 
tragedy. The older children were conscience-stricken 
at the mummery, and they ran, demoralized and 
shocked, into the house, leaving The Boy and the 
kittens behind them. Jane Purdy tripped over her 
veil, and one of the kittens was stepped on in the 
crush. But The Boy proceeded with the funeral. 

When The Boy got as far as a room of his own, 
papered with scenes from circus-posters, and peopled 
by tin soldiers, he used to play that his bed was the 
barge Mayflower^ running from Barrytown to the 



44 A BOY I KNEW 

foot of Jay Street, ISTorth Kiver, and that he was her 
captain and crew. She made nightly trips between 
the two ports ; and by day, when she was not tied 
up to the door-knob — which was Barry town — she 
was moored to the handle of the wash-stand drawer 
— which was the dock at New York. She never 
was wrecked, and she never ran aground ; but great 
was the excitement of The Boy when, as not infre- 
quently was the case, on occasions of sweeping, Han- 
nah, the up-stairs girl, set her adrift. 

The Mayfloiuer was seriously damaged by fire 
once, owing to the careless use, by a deck-hand, of a 
piece of punk on the night before the Fourth of 
July ; this same deck-hand being nearly blown up 
early the very next morning by a bunch of fire- 
crackers which went off — by themselves — in his lap. 
He did not know, for a second or two, whether the 
barffe had burst her boiler or had been struck bv 
lightning ! 

Barry town is the river port of Red Hook — a 
charming Dutchess County hamlet in which The Boy 
spent the first summer of his life, and in which he 
spent the better part of every succeeding summer for 
a quarter of a century ; and he sometimes goes there 
vet, although many of the names he knows were 
carved, in the long-agoes, on the tomb. He always 
went up and down, in those days, on the Mayflower^ 
the real boat of that name, which was hardly more 



St^S^ 




JOK STUART 



1^j^.j,tsjc^ri 



A BOY I KNEW 45 

real to him than was the trundle-bed of his vivid, 
nightly imagination. They sailed from JS'ew York 
at five o'clock p.m., an hour looked for, and longed 
for, by Tlie Boy, as the very beginning of summer, 
with all its delightful young charms; and they ar- 
rived at their destination about five of the clock the 
next morning, by which time The Boy was wide 
awake, and on the lookout for Lasher's Stage, in 
which he was to travel the intervening three miles. 
And eagerly he recognized, and loved, every land- 
mark on the road. Barringer's Corner; the half- 
way tree ; the road to the creek and to Madame 
Knox's ; and, at last, the village itself, and the tav- 
ern, and the tobacco-factory, and Massoneau's store, 
over the way ; and then, when Jane Purdy had 
shown him the new kittens and the little chickens, 
and he had talked to " Fido " and " Fanny," or to 
Fido alone after Fanny was stolen by gypsies — 
Fanny was Fido's wife, and a poodle — he rushed off 
to see Bob Hendricks, who was just his own age, 
barring a week, and who has been his warm friend 
for more than half a century ; and then what good 
times The Boy had ! 

Bob was possessed of a grandfather who could 
make kites, and swings, and parallel-bars, and things 
which The Boy liked ; and Bob had a mother — and 
he has her yet, happy Bob! — who made the most 
wonderful of cookies, perfectly round, with sparkling 



46 A BOY I KNEW 

globules of sugar on tliem, and little round holes in 
the middle ; and Bob and The Boy for days, and 
weeks, and months together hen's-egged, and rode in 
the hay-carts, and went for the mail every noon, and 
boosted each other up into the best pound-sweet-tree 
in the neighborhood ; and pelted each other with 
little green apples, which weighed about a pound to 
the peck; and gathered currants and chestnuts in 
season ; and with long straws they sucked new cider 
out of bung-holes ; and learned to swim ; and caught 
their first fish ; and did all the pleasant things that 
all boys do. 

At Ked Hook they smoked their first cigar — 
half a cigar, left by uncle Phil — and they wished 
they hadn't! And at Eed Hook they disobeyed 
their mothers once, and were found out. They were 
told not to go wading in the creek upon pain of not 
going to the creek at all; and for weeks they were 
deprived of the delights of the society of the Faure 
boys, through whose domain the creek ran, because, 
when they went to bed on that disastrous night, it 
was discovered that Bob had on The Boy's stockings, 
and that The Boy was wearing Bob's socks ; a piece 
of circumstantial evidence which convicted them 
both. When the embargo was raised and they next 
went to the creek, it is remembered that Bob tore 
his trousers in climbing over a log, and that The 
Boy fell in altogether. 




BOB riEXDKICKS 



A BOY I KNEW 47 

The Boy usually kept his promises, however, and 
he was known even to keep a candy-cane — twenty- 
eight inches long, red and white striped like a bar- 
ber's pole — for a fortnight, because his mother limit- 
ed him to the consumption of two inches a day. 
But he could not keep any knees to his trousers ; 
and when The Boy's mother threatened to sew but- 
tons — brass buttons, with sharp and penetrating 
eyes — on to that particular portion of the garment 
in question, he wanted to know, in all innocence, 
how they expected him to say his prayers ! 

One of Bob's earliest recollections of The Boy is 
connected with a toy express-wagon on four wheels, 
which could almost turn around on its own axis. 
The Boy imported this vehicle into Eed Hook one 
summer, and they used it for the transportation of 
their chestnuts and their currants and their apples, 
green and ripe, and the mail, and most of the dust of 
the road ; and Bob thinks, to this day, that nothing in 
all these after years has given him so much profound 
satisfaction and enjoyment as did that little cart. 

Bob remembers, too — what The Boy tries to for- 
get — The Boy's daily practice of half an hour on the 
piano borrowed by The Boy's mother from Mrs. 
Bates for that dire purpose. Mrs. Bates's piano is 
almost the only unpleasant thing associated with 
Red Hook in all The Boy's experience of that happy 
village. It was pretty hard on The Boy, because, iu 



A BOY I KNEW 49 

It never happened again, dear Bob, and, please 
God, it never will ! 

Another trouble The Boy had in Eed Hook was 
Dr. McNamee, a resident dentist, who operated upon 
The Boy, now and then. He was a little more gentle 
than was The Boy's city dentist, Dr. Castle ; but he 
hurt, for all that. Dr. Castle lived in Fourth Street, 
opposite "Washington Parade Ground, and on the 
same block with Clarke and Tanning's school. And 
to this day The Boy would go miles out of his way 
rather than pass Dr. Castle's house. Personally Dr. 
Castle was a delightful man, who told The Boy 
amusing stories, which The Boy could not laugh at 
while his mouth was wide open. But professionally 
Dr. Castle was to The Boy an aAvful horror, of whom 
he always dreamed when his dreams were particu- 
larly bad. As he looks back upon his boyhood, with 
its frequent toothache and its long hours in the den- 
tists' chairs. The Boy sometimes thinks that if he had 
his life to live over again, and could not go through 
it without teeth, he would prefer not to be born at 
all! 

It has rather amused The Boy, in his middle age, 
to learn of the impressions he made upon Red Hook 
in his extreme youth. Bob, as has been shown, 
associates him with a little cart, and with a good 
deal of the concord of sweet sounds. One old friend 
remembers nothing but his phenomenal capacity for 



50 A BOY I KNEW 



the consumption of chicken pot -pie. Another old 
friend can recall the scrupulously clean white duck 
suits which he wore of afternoons, and also the blue- 
checked long apron which he was forced to wear in 
the mornings ; both of them exceedingly distasteful 
to The Boy, because the apron was a girl's garment, 
and because the duck suit meant " dress-up," and only 
the mildest of genteel play ; while Bob's sister dwells 
chiefly now upon the wonderful valentine The B03'' 
sent once to Zillah Crane. It was so large that it 
had to have an especial envelope made to fit it ; and 
it was so magnificent, and so delicate, that, notwith- 
standing the envelope, it came in a box of its own. 
It had actual lace, and pinkish Cupids reclining on 
light-blue clouds ; and in the centre of all was a com- 
pressible bird-cage, which, when it was pulled out, 
like an accordion, displayed not a dove merely, but 
a plain gold ring — a real ring, made of real gold. 
Nothing like it had ever been seen before in all 
Dutchess County; and it was seen and envied by 
every girl of Zillah's age between Ehinebeck and 
Tivoli, between Barrytown and Pine Plains. 

The Boy did an extensive business in the valentine 
line, in the days when February Fourteenth meant 
much more to boys than it does now. He sent 
sentimental valentines to Phoebe Hawkins and comic 
valentines to Ann Hughes, both of them written 
anonymously, and both directed in a disguised hand. 



A BOY I KNEW 51 

But both recipients always knew from whom they 
came; and, in all probability, neither of them w^as 
much affected by the receipt. The Boy, as he has 
put on record elsewhere, never really, in his inmost 
heart, thought that comic valentines were so very 
comic, because those that came to him usually re- 
flected upon his nose, or were illuminated with por- 
traits of gentlemen of all ages adorned with super- 
naturally red hair. 

In later years, ^vhen Bob and The Boy could swim — 
a little — and had learned to take care of themselves 
in water over their heads, the mill-pond at Bed Hook 
played an important part in their daily life there. 
They sailed it, and fished it, and camped out on its 
banks, with Ed Curtis — before Ed went to West 
Boint — and with Dick Hawley, Josie Briggs, and 
Frank Eodgers, all first - rate fellows. But that is 
another story. 

The Boy was asked, a year or two ago, to write 
a paper upon "The Books of his Boyhood." And 
Avhen he came to think the matter over he discov- 
ered, to his surprise, that the Books of his Boyhood 
consisted of but one book ! It was bound in two 
twelvemo green cloth volumes ; it bore the date of 
1850, and it was filled Avith pictorial illustrations of 
"The Personal History and Experiences of David 
Copperfield, the Younger." It was the first book 
The Boy ever read, and he thought then, and some- 



52 A BOY I KNEW 

times he thinks now, that it was the greatest book 
ever written. The traditional books of the childhood 
of other children came later to The Boy : " Eobinson. 
Crusoe," and the celebrated "Swiss Family" of the 
same name ; " The Desert Home," of Mayne Eeid ; 
Marryat's " Peter Simple " ; " The Leather Stocking 
Tales " ; " Kob Eoy " ; and " The Three Guardsmen " 
were well thumbed and well liked; but they were 
not The Boy's first love in fiction, and they never 
usurped, in his affections, the place of the true ac- 
count of David Copperfield. It was a queer book 
to have absorbed the time and attention of a boy of 
eight or nine, who had to skip the big words, who 
did not understand it all, but who cried, as he has 
cried but once since, whenever he came to that 
dreadful chapter which tells the story of the taking 
away of David's mother, and of David's utter, hope- 
less desolation over his loss. 

How the book came into The Boy's possession he 
cannot now remember, nor is he sure that his parents 
realized how much, or how often, he was engrossed 
in its contents. It cheered him in the measles, it 
comforted him in the mumps. He took it to school 
with him, and he took it to bed with him ; and he 
read it, over and over again, especially the early 
chapters ; for he did not care so much for David 
after David became Trotwood, and fell in love. 

"When, in 1852, after his grandfather's death, The 



A BOY I KNEW 53 

Boy first saw London, it was not the London of the 
Eomans, the Saxons, or the I^ormans, or the London 
of the Plantagenets or the Tudors, but the London 
of the Micawbers and the Traddleses, the London of 
Murdstone and Grinby, the London of Dora's Aunt 
and of Jip. On his arrival at Euston Station the 
first object upon which his eyes fell was a donkey- 
cart, a large wooden tray on wheels, driven, at a 
rapid pace, by a long-legged young man, and fol- 
lowed, at a pace hardly so rapid, by a boy of about 
his own age, who seemed in great mental distress. 
This was the opening scene. And London, from 
that moment, became to him, and still remains, a 
great moving panorama of David Copperfield. 

He saw the Orfling, that first evening, snorting 
along Tottenham Court Koad ; he saw Mealy Pota- 
toes, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, lounging 
along Broad Street ; he saAv Martha disappear swiftly 
and silently into one of the dirty streets leading from 
Seven Dials ; he saw innumerable public-houses — the 
Lion, or the Lion and something else — in any one of 
which David might have consumed that memorable 
glass of Genuine Stunning ale with a good head on 
it. As they drove through St. Martin's Lane, and 
past a court at the back of the church, he even got 
a glimpse of the exterior of the shop where was sold 
a special pudding, made of currants, but dear ; a two- 
pennyworth being no larger than a pennyworth of 



54 A BOY I KNEW 

more ordinary pudding at any other establisliment 
in the neighborhood. And, to crown all, when he 
looked out of his back bedroom window, at Morley's 
Hotel, he discovered that he was looking at the 
actual bedroom windows of the Golden Cross on 
the Strand, in which Steerforth and little Copper- 
field had that disastrous meeting w^hich indirectly 
brought so much sorrow to so many innocent men 
and women. 

This was but the beginning of countless similar 
experiences, and the beginning of a love for Land- 
marks of a more important but hardly of a more de- 
lightful character. Ilungerford Market and Hunger- 
ford Stairs, with the blacking - warehouse abutting 
on the water when the tide was in, and on the mud 
when the tide was out, still stood near Morley's in 
1852 ; and very close to them stood then, and still 
stands to-day, the old house in Buckingham Street, 
Adelphi, where, with Mrs. Crupp, Trotwood Copper- 
field found his lodgings when he began his new life 
with Spenlow and Jorkins. These chambers, once 
the home of Clarkson Stanfield, and since of Mr. 
William Black and of Dr. B. E. Martin, became, in 
later days, very familiar to Tlie Boy, and still are 
haunted by the great crowd of the ghosts of the 
past. The Boy has seen there, within a few years, 
and with his ej^es wide open, the spirits of Traddles, 
of Micawber, of Steerforth, of Mr. JDick, of Clara 



A BOY I KNEW 65 

Peggotty and Daniel, of Uriah Heep — the last slept 
one evening on the sofa pillows before the fire, you 
may remember — and of Aunt Betsy herself. But in 
1852 he could only look at the outside of the house, 
and, now and then, when the door was open, get a 
glimpse of the stairs down which some one fell and 
rolled, one evening, when somebody else said it was 
Copperfield ! 

The Boy never walked along the streets of Lon- 
don by his father's side during that memorable 
summer without meeting, in fancy, some friend of 
David's, without passing some spot that David knew, 
and loved, or hated. And he recognized St. Paul's 
Cathedral at the first glance, because it had figured 
as an illustration on the cover of Peggotty's work- 
box! 

Perhaps the event which gave him the greatest 
pleasure was a casual meeting with little Miss 
Moucher in a green omnibus coming from the top of 
Baker Street to Trafalgar Square. It could not pos- 
sibly have been anybody else. There were the same 
large head and face, the same short arms. " Throat 
she had none ; waist she had none ; legs she had 
none, worth mentioning." Tlie Boy can still hear the 
pattering of the rain on the rattly windows of that 
lumbering green omnibus ; he can remember every 
detail of the impressive drive ; and Miss Moucher, and 
the fact of her existence in the flesh, and there present, 



56 A BOY I KNEW 

wiped from his mind ever}'- trace of Mme. Tussaud's 
famous gallery, and the waxworks it contained. 

This was the Book of The Boy's Boyhood. He 
does not recommend it as the exclusive literature of 
their boyhood to other boys ; but out of it The Bo}^ 
knows that he got nothing but what was healthful 
and helping. It taught him to abominate selfish 
brutality and sneaking falsehood, as they were ex- 
hibited in the Murdstones and the Heeps ; it taught 
him to keep Charles I., and other fads, out of his 
" Memorials " ; it taught him to avoid rash expendi- 
ture as it was practised by the Micawbers; it showed 
him that a man like Steerforth might be the best of 
good fellows and at the same time the worst and 
most dangerous of companions; it showed, on the 
other hand, that true friends like Traddles are worth 
having and worth keeping; it introduced him to the 
devoted, sisterly affection of a woman like Agnes ; 
and it proved to him that the rough pea-jacket of a 
man like Ham Peggotty might cover the simple 
heart of as honest a gentleman as ever lived. 

The Boy, in his time, has been brought in contact 
with many famous men and women ; but upon noth- 
ing in his whole experience does he look back now 
with greater satisfaction than upon his slight inter- 
course with the first great man he ever knew. Quite 
a little lad, he was staying at the Pulaski House in 
Savannah, in 1853 — perhaps it was in 1855 — when 




■i:"-...-^ 



4^- :::-^^' 



THE BOY S FATHER 



A BOY I KNEW 57 

his father told him to observe particularly the old 
gentleman with the spectacles, who occupied a seat 
at their table in the public dining-room ; for, he said, 
the time would come when The Boy would be very 
proud to say that he had breakfasted, and dined, and 
supped with Mr. Thackeray. He had no idea who, 
or what, Mr. Thackeray was ; but his father con- 
sidered him a great man, and that was enough for 
The Boy. He did pay particular attention to Mr, 
Thackeray, with his eyes and his ears ; and one 
morning Mr. Thackeray paid a little attention to 
him, of which he is proud, indeed. Mr. Thackeray 
took The Boy between his knees, and asked his 
name, and what he intended to be when he grew up. 
He replied, "-A farmer, sir." Why, he cannot im- 
agine, for he never had the slightest inclination 
towards a farmer's life. And then Mr. Thackeray 
put his gentle hand upon The Boy's little red head, 
and said : "Whatever you are, try to be a good one." 

To have been blessed by Thackeray is a distinction 
The Boy would not exchange for any niche in the 
Temple of Literary Fame ; no laurel crown he could 
ever receive would be able to obliterate, or to equal, 
the sense of Thackeraj^'s touch ; and if there be any 
virtue in the laying on of hands The Boy can only 
hope that a little of it has descended upon him. 

And whatever The Boy is, he has tried, for Thack- 
Cray's sake, " to be a good one !" 



FOUR DOGS 



WHISKIE 

AN EAU DE VIE 

In doggerel lines, Wbiskie my dog I sing. 

These Hues are after Virgil, Pope, or some one. 
His very voice has got a Whiskie Ring. 

I call him Whiskie, 'cause he's such a rum one. 

His is a high-whine, and his nip has power, 
Hot-Scotch his temper, but no Punch is merrier ; 

Not Rye, not Schnappish, he's no Whiskie-Sour. 
I call him Whiskie — he's a Whis-Skye terrier. 



FOUR DOGS 



IT was Dr. John Brown, of Edinboro', who once 
spoke in sincere sympathy of the man who " led 
a dog-less life." It was Mr. "Josh Billings" who 
said that in the whole history of the world there is 
but one thing that money cannot buy, to wit : the 
■wag of a dog's tail. And it was Professor John C. 
Yan Dyke who declared the other day, in reviewing 
the artistic career of Landseer, that he made his dogs 
too human. It was the Great Creator himself who 
made dogs too human — so human that sometimes 
they put humanity to shame. 

The Boy has been the friend and confidant of 
Four Dogs who have helped to humanize him for a 
quarter of a century and more, and who have souls 
to be saved, he is sure. And when he crosses the 
Stygian River he expects to find, on the other shore, 
a trio of dogs wagging their tails almost off, in their 
joy at his coming, and with honest tongues hanging 
out to lick his hands and his feet. And then he is 



62 FOUR DOGS 

going, with these faithful, devoted dogs at his heels, 
to talk about dogs with Dr. John Brown, Sir Edwin 
Landseer, and Mr. " Josh Billings." 

The first dog, Whiskie, was an alleged Skye ter- 
rier, coming, alas ! from a clouded, not a clear, sky. 
He had the most beautiful and the most perfect head 
ever seen on a dog, but his legs w^ere altogether too 
long ; and the rest of him was — just dog. He came 
into the family in 1867 or 1868. He was, at the be- 
ginning, not popular with the seniors ; but he was 
so honest, so ingenuous, so " square," that he made 
himself irresistible, and he soon became even dearer 
to the father and to the mother than he was to The 
Boy. Whiskie was not an amiable character, except 
to his own people. He hated everybody else, he 
barked at everybody else, and sometimes he bit 
everybody else — friends of the household as well as 
the butcher-boys, the baker-boys, and the borrowers 
of money who came to the door. He had no dis- 
crimination in his likes and dislikes, and, naturally, 
he was not popular, except among his own people. 
He hated all cats but his own cat, by whom he was 
bullied in a most outrageous way. Whiskie had the 
sense of shame and the sense of humor. 

One warm summer evening, the family was sitting 
on the front steps, after a refreshing shower of rain, 
when AVhiskie saw a cat in the street, picking its 
dainty way among the little puddles of water. With 



FOUR DOGS 63 

a muttered curse he dashed after the cat without 
discovering, until within a few feet of it, that it was 
the cat who belonged to him. He tried to stop him- 
self in his impetuous career, he put on all his brakes, 
literally skimming along the street railway-track as 
if he were out simply for a slide, passing the cat, who 
gave him a half-contemptuous, half-pitying look ; and 
then, after inspecting the sky to see if the rain was 
really over and how the wind was, he came back to 
his place between the father and The Boy as if it 
were all a matter of course and of every-day occur- 
rence. But he knew they were laughing at him ; 
and if ever a dog felt sheepish, and looked sheepish 
— if ever a dog said, " "What an idiot I've made of 
myself !" Whiskie was that dog. 

The cat was a martinet in her way, and she de- 
manded all the privileges of her sex, Whiskie al- 
ways gave her precedence, and once when he, for a 
moment, forgot himself and started to go out of the 
dining-room door before her, she deliberately slapped 
him in the face ; whereupon he drew back instantly, 
like the gentleman he was, and waited for her to 
pass. 

Whiskie was fourteen or fifteen years of age in 
1882, when the mother went to join the father, and 
The Boy was taken to Spain by a good aunt and 
cousins. Whiskie was left at home to keep house 
with the two old servants who had known him all his 



64 FOUR DOGS 

life, and were in perfect sympathy with him. He had 
often been left alone before during the family's fre- 
quent journeyings about the world, the entire estab- 
lishment being kept running purely on his account. 
Usually he did not mind the solitude ; he was well 
taken care of in their absence, and lie felt that they 
were coming back some day. This time he knew it 
was different. He would not be consoled. He wan- 
dered listlessly and uselessly about the house ; into 
the mother's room, into his master's room; and one 
morning he was found in a dark closet, where he had 
never gone before, dead — of a broken heart. 

He had only a stump of a tail, but he will wag it — 
when next his master sees him ! 

The second dog was Punch — a perfect, thorough- 
bred Dandie Dinraont, and the most intelligent, if 
not the most affectionate, of the lot. Punch and 
The Boy kept house together for a year or two, and 
alone. The first thing in the morning, the last thing 
at night, Punch was in evidence. He went to the 
door to see his master safely off ; he was sniffing at 
the inside of the door the moment the key was heard 
in the latch, no matter how late at night ; and so long 
as there was light enough he watched for his master 
out of the window. Punch, too, had a cat — a son, 
or a grandson, of Whiskie's cat. Punch's favorite 
seat was in a chair in the front basement. Here, for 
hours, he would look out at the passers-by — indulg- 







PUNCH 



FOUR DOGS 65 

ing in the study of man, the proper study of his kind. 
The chair was what is known as " cane-bottomed," 
and through its perforations the cat was fond of 
tickling Punch, as he sat. When Punch felt that 
the joke had been carried far enough, he would rise 
in his wrath, chase the cat out into the kitchen, 
around the back-yard, into the kitchen again, and 
then, perhaps, have it out with the cat under the 
sink — without the loss of a hair, the use of a claw, 
or an angry spit or snarl. Punch and the cat slept 
together, and dined together, in utter harmony ; and 
the master has often gone up to his own bed, after a 
solitary cigar, and left them purring and snoring in 
each other's arms. They assisted at each other's 
toilets, washed each other's faces, and once, when 
Mary Cook was asked what was the matter with 
Punch's eye, she said : " I thinh, Sur, that the cat 
must have put her finger in it, when she combed his 
bang!" 

Punch loved everybody. He seldom barked, he 
never bit. He cared nothing for clothes, or style, or 
social position. He was as cordial to a beggar as he 
would have been to a king; and if thieves had come 
to break through and steal, Punch, in his unfailing, 
hospitable amiability, would have escorted them 
through the house, and shown them where the 
treasures were kept. All the children were fond of 
Punch, who accepted mauling as never did dog be- 

5 



66 FOUR DOGS 

fore. His master could carry him up-stairs by the 
tail, without a murmur of anything but satisfaction 
on Punch's part; and one favorite performance of 
theirs was an amateur representation of " Daniel in 
the Lion's Den," Punch being all the animals, his 
master, of course, being the prophet himself. The 
struggle for victory was something awful. Daniel 
seemed to be torn limb from limb, Punch, all the 
time, roaring like a thousand beasts of the forest, 
and treating his victim as tenderly as if he were 
wooing a sucking dove. The entertainment — when 
there were young persons at the house — was of 
nightly occurrence, and always repeatedly encored. 
Punch, however, never cared to play Lion to the 
Daniel of anybody else. 

One of Punch's expressions of poetic affection is 
still preserved b}'' a little girl who is now grown up, 
and has little girls of her own. It was attached to a 
Christmas-gift — a locket containing a scrap of blue- 
gray wool. And here it is : 

"Punch Hutton is ready to vow and declare 
That his friend Milly Barrett's a brick. 
He begs she'll accept of this lock of his hair ; 
And he sends her his love — and a lick." 

Punch's most memorable performance, perhaps, 
was his appearance at a dinner-party of little ladies 
and gentlemen. They were told that the chief dish 



FOUR DOGS 67 

of the entertainment was one which they all particu- 
larly liked, and their curiosity, naturally, was greatly 
excited. The table was cleared, the carving-knife was 
sharpened in a most demonstrative manner, and half 
a dozen pairs of very wide-open little eyes were fixed 
upon the door through which the waitress entered, 
bearing aloft an enormous platter, upon which noth- 
ing was visible but a cover of equally enormous size — 
both of them borrowed, by-the-way, for the important 
occasion. "When the cover was raised, with all cere- 
mony, Punch was discovered, in a highly nervous 
state, and apparently as much delighted and amused 
at the situation as was anybody else. The guests, 
with one voice, declared that he was "sweet enough 
to eat." 

Punch died very suddenly; poisoned, it is sup- 
posed, by somebody whom he never injured. He 
never injured a living soul ! And when Mary Cook 
dug a hole, by the side of Whiskie's grave, one raw 
afternoon, and put Punch into it, his master is not 
ashamed to confess that he shut himself up in his 
room, threw himself onto the bed, and cried as he 
has not cried since they took his mother away from 
him. 

Mop was the third of the quartet of dogs, and he 
came into the household like the Quality of Mercy. 
A night or two after the death of Punch, his mas- 
ter chanced to be dining with the Coverleys, in 



68 FOUR DOGS 

Brooklyn. Mr. Coverley, noticing the trappings and 
the suits of woe which his friend wore in his face, 
naturally asked the cause. He had in his stable a 
Dandie as fine as Punch, whom he had not seen, or 
thought of, for a month. "Would the bereaved one 
like to see him ? The mourner would like to look at 
any dog who looked like the companion who had 
been taken from him ; and a call, through a speak- 
ing-tube, brought into the room, head over heels, 
with all the wild impetuosity of his race, Punch per- 
sonified, his ghost embodied, his twin brother. The 
same long, lithe body, the same short legs (the fore 
legs shaped like a capital S), the same short tail, the 
same hair dragging the ground, the same beautiful 
head, the same wistful, expressive eye, the same cool, 
insinuating nose. The new-comer raced around the 
table, passing his owner unnoticed, and not a word 
was spoken. Then this Dandie cut a sort of double 
pigeon-wing, gave a short bark, put his crooked, dirty 
little feet on the stranger's knees, insinuated his cool 
and expressive nose into an unresisting hand, and 
wagged his stump of a tail with all his loving might. 
It was the longed-for touch of a vanished paw, the 
lick of a tongue that was still. He was unkempt, 
uncombed, uncared for, but he was another Punch, 
and he knew a friend when he saw one. " If that 
were my dog he would not live forgotten in a stable : 
he would take the place in the society to w^hich his 




MOP AND HIS MASTER 



FOUR DOGS 69 

birth and his evident breeding entitle him," was the 
friend's remark, and Mop regretfully went back to 
his stall. 

The next morning, early, he came into the Thirty- 
fourth Street study, combed, kempt, shining, cared 
for to a superlative degree ; with a note in his mouth 
signifying that his name was Mop and that he was 
The Boy's. He was The Boy's, and The Boy was 
his, so long as he lived, ten happy years for both of 
them. 

Without Punch's phenomenal intelligence. Mop had 
many of Punch's ways, and all of Punch's trust and 
affection ; and, like Punch, he was never so superla- 
tively happy as when he was roughly mauled and 
pulled about by his tail. When by chance he was 
shut out in the back-yard, he knocked, with his tail, 
on the door ; he squirmed his way into the heart of 
Mary Cook in the first ten minutes, and in half an 
hour he was on terras of the most affectionate friend- 
ship with Punch's cat. 

Mop had absolutely no sense of fear or of animal 
proportions. As a catter he was never equalled ; a 
Yale-man, by virtue of an honorary degree, he tack- 
led everything he ever met in the feline Avay — with 
the exception of the Princeton Tiger — and he has 
been known to attack dogs seven times as big as 
himself. He learned nothing by experience: he never 
knew when he was thrashed. The butcher's dog at 



70 FOUR DOGS 

Onteora whipped, and bit, and chewed him into semi- 
helpless unconsciousness three times a week for four 
months, one summer ; and yet Mop, half paralyzed, 
bandaged, soaked in Pond's Extract, unable to hold 
up his head to respond to the greetings of his own 
family, speechless for hours, was up and about and 
ready for another fray and another chewing, the 
moment the butcher's dog, unseen, unscented by the 
rest of the household, appeared over the brow of the 
hill. 

The only creature by whom Mop was ever really 
overcome was a black-and-white, common, every-day, 
garden skunk. He treed this unexpected visitor on 
the wood-pile one famous moonlight night in Onteo- 
ra. And he acknowledged his defeat at once, and 
like a man. He realized fully his own unsavory condi- 
tion. He retired to a far corner of the small estate, 
and for a week, prompted only by his own instinct, 
he kept to the leeward of Onteora society. 

He went out of Onteora, that summer, in a blaze 
of pugnacious glory. It was the last day of the sea- 
son; many households were being broken up, and 
four or five families were leaving the colony to- 
gether. All was confusion and hurry at the little 
railway station at Tannersville. Scores of trunks 
were being checked, scores of packages were being 
labelled for expressage, every hand held a bag, or a 
bundle, or both ; and Mop, a semi-invalid, his fore paw 



FOUR DOGS 71 

and his ear in slings, the result of recent encounters 
with the butcher's dog, was carried, for safety's sake, 
and for the sake of his own comfort, in a basket, 
which served as an ambulance, and was carefully 
placed in the lap of the cook. As the train finally 
started, already ten minutes late, the cook, to give 
her hero a last look at the Hill-of-the-Sky, opened the 
basket, and the window, that he might wag a farewell 
tail. When lo ! the butcher's dog appeared upon the 
scene, and, in an instant, Mop was out of the win- 
dow and under the car-wheels, in the grip of the 
butcher's dog. Intense was the excitement. The en- 
gine was stopped, and brakemen, and firemen, and 
conductors, and passengers, and on-lookers, and other 
dogs, were shouting and barking and trying to sep- 
arate the combatants. At the end of a second ten 
minutes Mop — minus a piece of the other ear — was 
back in his ambulance : conquered, but happy. He 
never saw the butcher's dog or Onteora again. 

To go back a little. Mop was the first person who 
was told of his master's engagement, and he was the 
first to greet the wife when she came home, a bride, 
to his own house. He had been made to understand, 
from the beginning, that she did not care for dogs — 
in general. And he set himself out to please, and to 
overcome the unspoken antagonism. He had a deli- 
cate part to play, and he played it with a delicacy 
and a tact which rarely have been equalled. He did 



72 FOUR DOGS 

not assert himself ; he kept himself in the back- 
ground ; he said little ; his approaches at first were 
slight and almost imperceptible, but he was always 
ready to do, or to help, in an unaggressive way. He 
followed her about the house, up-stairs and down- 
stairs, and he looked and waited. Then he began to 
sit on the train of her gown ; to stand as close to her 
as was fit and proper ; once in a while to jump upon 
the sofa beside her, or into the easy-chair behind her, 
winking at his master, from time to time, in his quiet 
way. 

And at last he was successful. One dreary winter, 
when he suffered terribl}'' from inflammatory rheu- 
matism, he found his mistress making a bed for him 
by the kitchen fire, getting up in the middle of the 
night to go down to look after hira, when he uttered, 
in pain, the cries he could not help. And when a 
bottle of very rare old brandy, kept for some ex- 
traordinary occasion of festivity, was missing, the 
master was informed that it had been used in rub- 
bing Mop ! 

Mop's early personal history was never known. 
Told once that he was the purest Dandie in America, 
and asked his pedigree, his master Avas moved to look 
into the matter of his family tree. It seems that a 
certain sea-captain was commissioned to bring back 
to this country the best Dandie to be had in all Scot- 
land. He sent his quartermaster to find him, and 



FOUR DOGS 73 

tlie quartermaster found Mop under a private car- 
riage, in Argyle Street, Glasgow, and brought him 
on board. That is Mop's pedigree. 

Mop died of old age and of a complication of dis- 
eases, in the spring of 1892. He lost his hair, he lost 
his teeth, he lost everything but his indomitable 
spirit ; and when almost on the brink of the grave, 
he stood in the back-yard — literally, on the brink of 
his own grave — for eight hours in a March snow- 
storm, motionless, and watching a great black cat 
on the fence, whom he hypnotized, and who final- 
ly came down to be killed. The cat weighed more 
than Mop did, and was very gamy. And the en- 
counter nearly cost a lawsuit. 

This was Mop's last public appearance. He re- 
tired to his bed before the kitchen range, and 
gradually and slowly he faded away : amiable, un- 
repining, devoted to the end. A consultation of doc- 
tors showed that his case was hopeless, and Mop was 
condemned to be carried off to be killed humanely 
by the society founded by Mr. Bergh, where without 
cruelty they end the sufferings of animals. Mop had 
not left his couch for weeks. His master spoke to 
him about it, with tears in his eyes, one night. He 
said : "To - morrow must end it, old friend. 'Tis 
for your sake and your relief. It almost breaks my 
heart, old friend. But there is another and a bet- 
ter world — even for dogs, old friend. And for old 



74 FOUR DOGS 

acquaintance' sake, and for old friendship's sake, I 
must have you sent on ahead of me, old friend." 

The next morning, when he came down to break- 
fast, there by the empty chair sat Mop. How he 
got himself up the stairs nobody knows. But there 
he was, and the society which a good man founded 
saw not Mop that day. 

The end came soon afterwards. And Mop has 
gone on to join Whiskie and Punch in their waiting 
for The Boy. 

The family went abroad for a year's stay, when 
Mop died, and they rented the house to good people 
and good tenants, who have never been forgiven for 
one particular act. They buried a dog of their own 
in the family plot in the back-yard, and under the 
ailantus-tree which shades the graves of the cats and 
the dogs ; and The Boy feels that they have profaned 
the spot ! 

It seemed to his master, after the passing of Mop, 
that the master's earthly account with dogs was 
closed. The pain of parting was too great to be en- 
dured. But another Dandie came to him, one Christ- 
mas morning, to fill the aching void ; and for a time 
again his life is not a dogless one. 

The present ruler of the household has a pedigree 
much longer and much straighter than his own front 
legs. Although he comes from a distinguished line of 
prize-winning thoroughbreds, he never will be per- 




ROT AND ins MASTER 



FOUR DOGS 75 

mitted to compete for a medal on his own behalf. 
The Dog Show should be suppressed by the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dogs. It has ruined 
the dispositions and broken the hearts of very many 
of the best friends humanity ever had. And the 
man who would send his dog to the Dog Show, 
would send his wife to a Wife Show, and permit his 
baby to be exhibited, in public, for a blue ribbon or a 
certificate — at an admission-fee of fifty cents a head ! 

Mop's successor answers to the name of Roy — 
when he answers to anything at all. He is young, 
very wilful, and a little hard of hearing, of which 
latter affliction he makes the most. He always un- 
derstands when he is invited to go out. He is stone- 
deaf, invariably, when he is told to come back. But 
he is full of affection, and he has a keen sense of 
humor. In the face he looks Hke Thomas Carlyle, 
and Professor John "Weir declares that his body is all 
out of drawing ! 

At times his devotion to his mistress is beautiful 
and touching. It is another case of " Mary and the 
Lamb, you know." If his mistress is not visible, he 
waits patiently about ; and he is sure to go wherever 
she goes. It makes the children of the neighborhood 
laugh and play. But it is severe upon the master, 
who does most of the training, while the mistress 
gets most of the devotion. That is the w^ay with 
lambs, and with dogs, and with some folks ! 



76 FOUR DOGS 

Koy is quite as much of a fighter as was any one 
of the other dogs; but he is a little more dis- 
criminating in his likes and his dislikes. He fights 
all the dogs in Tannersville ; he fights the Drislers' 
Gyp almost every time he meets him ; he fights the 
Beckwiths' Blennie only when either one of them 
trespasses on the domestic porch of the other (Blen- 
nie, who is very pretty, looks like old portraits of 
Mrs. Browning, with the curls hanging on each side 
of the face) ; and Koy never fights Laddie Pruyn nor 
Jack Ropes at all. Jack Ropes is the hero whom he 
worships, the beau ideal to him of everything a dog 
should be. He follows Jack in all respects ; and he 
pays Jack the sincere flattery of imitation. Jack, an 
Irish setter, is a thorough gentleman in form, in ac- 
tion, and in thought. Some years Roy's senior, he 
submits patiently to the playful capers of the younger 
dog ; and he even accepts little nips at his legs or his 
ears. It is pleasant to watch the two friends during 
an afternoon walk. Whatever Jack does, that does 
Roy; and Jack knows it, and he gives Roy hard 
things to do. He leads Roy to the summit of high 
rocks, and then he jumps down, realizing that Roy is 
too small to take the leap. But he always waits un- 
til Roy, yelping with mortification, comes back by the 
way they both went. He wades through puddles up 
to his own knees, but over Roy's head ; and then he 
trots cheerfully away, far in advance, while Roy has 



FOUR DOGS 77 

to stop long enough to shake himself dry. But it was 
Roy's turn once ! He traversed a long and not very 
clean drain, which was just large enough to give free 
passage to his own small body ; and Jack went rush- 
ing after. Jack got through ; but he was a spectacle 
to behold. And there are creditable eye-witnesses 
who are ready to testify that Roy took Jack home, 
and sat on the steps, and laughed, while Jack was 
being washed. 

Each laughed on the wrong side of his mouth, 
however — Jack from agony, and Roy from sympa- 
thy — when Jack, a little later, had his unfortunate 
adventure with the loose-quilled, fretful, Onteora por- 
cupine. It nearly cost Jack his life and his reason ; 
and for some time he was a helpless, suffering invalid. 
Doctors were called in, chloroform was administered, 
and many delicate surgical operations were performed 
before Jack was on his feet again ; and for the while 
each tail drooped. Happily for Roy, he did not go 
to the top of the Hill-of-the-Sky that unlucky day, 
and so he escaped the porcupine. But Roy does not 
care much for porcupines, anyway, and he never did. 
Other dogs are porcupiney enough for him ! 

Roy's association with Jack Ropes is a liberal edu- 
cation to him in more ways than one. Jack is so big 
and so strong and so brave, and so gentle withal, and 
so refined in manners and intellectual in mind, that 
Ro}'-, even if he would, could not resist the healthful 



78 FOUR DOGS 

influence. Jack never quarrels except when Eoy 
quarrels ; and whether Roy is in the right or in the 
wrong, the aggressor or the attacked (and generally 
he begins it), Jack invariably interferes on Roy's be- 
half, in a good-natured, big-brother, what-a-bother 
sort of way that will not permit Roy to be the under 
dog in any fight. Part of Roy's dislike of Blennie — 
Blennie is short for Blenheim — consists in the fact 
that while Blennie is nice enough in his way, it is not 
Roy's way. Blennie likes to sit on laps, to bark out 
of windows — at a safe distance. He wears a little 
sleigh-bell on his collar. Under no circumstances 
does he play folio w-my-leader, as Jack does. He does 
not try to do stunts ; and, above all, he does not care 
to go in swimming. 

The greatest event, perhaps, in Roy's young life 
was his first swim. He did not know he could swim. 
He did not know what it was to swim. He had 
never seen a sheet of water larger than a road-side 
puddle or than the stationary wash-tubs of his own 
laundry at home. He would have nothing to do 
with the Pond, at first, except for drinking purposes ; 
and he would not enter the water until Jack went in, 
and then nothing would induce him to come out of 
the water — until Jack was tired. His surprise and 
his pride at being able to take care of himself in an 
entirely unknown and unexplored element were very 
great. But — there is always a But in Roy's case — 



FOUR DOGS 79 

but when he swam ashore the trouble began. Jack, 
in a truly Chesterfieldiaa manner, dried himself in 
the long grass on the banks. Roy dried himself, in 
the deep yellow dust of the road — a medium which 
was quicker and more effective, no doubt, but not so 
pleasant for those about him ; for he was so enthu- 
siastic over his performance that he jumped upon 
everj^body's knickerbockers, or upon the skirts of 
everybody's gown, for the sake of a lick at some- 
body's hand and a pat of appreciation and applause. 

Another startling and never-to-be-forgotten ex- 
perience of Roy's was his introduction to the par- 
tridge. He met the partridge casually one afternoon 
in the woods, and he paid no particular attention to 
it. He looked upon it as a plain barn-yard chicken 
a little out of place ; but when the partridge whirled 
and whizzed and boomed itself into the air, Roy put 
all his feet together, and jumped, like a bucking 
horse, at the lowest estimate four times as high as 
his own head. He thought it was a porcupine ! He 
had heard a great deal about porcupines, although 
he had never seen one ; and he fancied that that was 
the way porcupines always went off ! 

Roy likes and picks blackberries — the green as 
well as the ripe ; and he does not mind having his 
portrait painted. Mr. Beckwith considers Roy one 
of the best models he ever had. Roy does not have 
to be posed ; he poses himself, willingly and patient- 



80 FOUR DOGS 

\y, so long as he can pose himself very close to his 
master ; and he always places his front legs, which 
he knows to be his strong point, in the immediate 
foreground. He tries very hard to look pleasant, as 
if he saw a chipmunk at the foot of a tree, or as if 
he thought Mr. Beckwith was squeezing little worms 
of white paint out of little tubes just for his amuse- 
ment. And if he really does see a chipmunk on a 
stump, he rushes off to bark at the chipmunk ; and 
then he comes back and resumes his original posi- 
tion, and waits for Mr. Beckwith to go on painting 
again. Once in a while, when he feels that Mr. Beck- 
with has made a peculiarly happy remark, or an un- 
usually happy stroke of the brush, Roy applauds 
tumultuously and loudly with his tail, against the 
seat of the bench or the side of the house. Boy has 
two distinct wags — the perpendicular and the hori- 
zontal ; and in his many moments of enthusiasm he 
never neglects to use that particular wag which is 
likely to make the most noise. 

Roy has many tastes and feelings which are in en- 
tire sympathy with those of his master. He cannot 
get out of a hammock unless he falls out ; and he 
is never so miserable as when Mrs. Butts comes over 
from the Eastkill Yalley to clean house. Mrs. Butts 
piles all the sitting-room furniture on the front piaz- 
za, and then she scrubs the sitting-room floor, and 
neither Roy nor his master, so long as Mrs. Butts 



.r 



^- 




FOUR DOGS 81 

has control, can enter the sitting-room for a bone or 
a book. And they do not like it, although they like 
Mrs. Butts. 

Roy has his faults; but his evil, as a rule, is 
wrought by want of thought rather than by want of 
heart. He shows his affection for his friends by 
walking under their feet and getting his own feet 
stepped on, or by sitting so close to their chairs that 
they rock on his tail. He has been known to hold 
two persons literally spellbound for minutes, with his 
tail under the rocker of one chair and both ears under 
the rocker of another one. Roy's greatest faults are 
barking at horses' heels and running away. This 
last is very serious, and often it is annoying; but 
there is always some excuse for it. He generally 
runs away to the Williamsons', which is the summer 
home of his John and his Sarah ; and where lodges 
Miss Flossie Burns, of Tanners ville, his summer-girl. 
He knows that the Williamsons themselves do not 
want too much of him, no matter how John and 
Sarah and Miss Burns may feel on the subject ; and 
he knows, too, that his own family wishes him to stay 
more at home ; but, for all that, he runs away. He 
slips off at every opportunity. He pretends that 
he is only going down to the road to see what time 
it is, or that he is simply setting out for a blackberry 
or the afternoon's mail ; and when he is brought re- 
luctantly home, he makes believe that he has for- 



82 FOUR DOGS 

gotten all about it ; and he naps on the top step, or 
in the door-way, in the most guileless and natural 
manner; and then, when nobody is looking, he 
dashes off, barking at any imaginary ox-cart, in wild, 
unrestrainable impetuosity, generally in the direction 
of the Williamsons' cottage, and bringing up, almost 
invariably, under the Williamsons' kitchen stove. 

He would rather be shut np, in the Williamsons' 
kitchen, with John and Sarah, and with a chance of 
seeing Flossie through the wire-screened door, than 
roam in perfect freedom over all his own domain. 

He will bark at horses' heels until he is brought 
home, some day, with broken ribs. Nothing but 
hard experience teaches Roy. There is no use of 
boxing his ears. That only hurts his feelings, and 
gives him an extra craving for sympathy. He licks 
the hand that licks him, until every one of the five 
fingers is heartily ashamed of itself. 

Several autograph letters of Eoy's, in verse, in 
blank-verse, and in plain, hard prose, signed by his 
own mark — a fore paw dipped in an ink-bottle and 
stamped upon the paper — were sold by Mrs. Custer 
at varying prices during a fair for the benefit of the 
Onteora Chapel Fund, in 1896. 

To one friend he wrote : 

"My DEAR Blennie Beckwith, — You are a sneak; and a 
snip ; and a snide ; and a snob ; and a snoozer ; and a snarler ; 
and a snapper ; and a skunk. And I hate you ; and I loathe you ; 




w 






FOUR DOGS 83 

and I despise you ; and I abominate you ; and I scorn you ; and I 
repudiate you ; and I abhor you ; and I dislike you ; and I eschew 
you ; and I dash you ; and I dare you. 

"Your affectionate friend, 
"P. S. — I've licked this spot. 

"R. H. 



His 




Roy 1^^^^^ ^^^^ulv Button. 



mark. 

" Witness : Kate Lynch." 

Inspired by Miss Flossie Williamson Burns's bright 
eyes, he dropped into poetry in addressing her : 

" Say I'm barkey ; say I'm bad ; 

Say the Thurber pony kicked me ; 
Say I run away — but add — 
'Flossie licked me.' his 

"Roy X Button. 
" Witness : Sarali Johnson." mark. 

In honor of "John Ropes, Esquire," he went to 
Shakspere : 



84 FOUR DOGS 

•'But that I am forbid 

To tell the secrets of thy mountain climb, 

I could a tail unfold, whose lightest wag 

Would harrow up the roof of thy mouth, draw thy young blood, 

Make thy two eyes, like a couple of safety-matches, start from 
their spheres ; 

Thy knotted and combined locks to part right straight down 
the middle of thy back. 

And each particular brick-red hair to stand on end 

Full of quills, shot out by a fretful Onteora porcupine. 

But this eternal blazon must not be 

To ears that are quite as handsome as is the rest of thy beau- 
tiful body. 

('" Hamlet,' altered to suit, by) 

his 

"Roy X HuTTON. 
"Witness: John Johnson." mark. 

His latest poetical efiFort was the result of his 
affection for a Scottish collie, in his neighborhood, 
and was indited 

TO LADDIE PRUYN, ESQ. 

Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot, 
And the Dogs of Auld Lang Syne ? 

I'll wag a tail o' kindness yet. 
For the sake of Auld Ladd Pruyn. 

Witnesses : 

Marion Lyman, 
Effle Waddington, 
Katherine Lyman. 

While Eoy was visiting the Fitches and the Tel- 
ford children, and little Agnes Ogden, at Wilton, 
Conn., some time afterwards, he dictated a long let- 
ter to his master, some portions of which, perhaps, 



FOUR DOGS 85 

are worth preserving. After the usual remarks upon 
the weather and the general health of the family, he 
touched upon serious, personal matters which had 
evidently caused him some mental and physical un- 
easiness. And he explained that while he was will- 
ing to confess that he did chase the white cat into a 
tree, and keep her away from her kittens for a couple 
of hours, he did not kill the little chicken. The little 
chicken, stepped upon by its own mother, was dead, 
quite dead, when he picked it up, and brought it to 
the house. And he made Dick Fitch, who was an 
eye-witness to the whole transaction, add a post- 
script testifying that the statement was true. 

John says the letter sounds exactly like Roy ! 

Roy's is a complex character. There is little me- 
dium about Roy. He is very good when he is good, 
and he is very horrid indeed when he is bad. He is 
a strange admixture of absolute devotion and of ut- 
ter inconstancy. Nothing will entice him away 
from John on one day, neither threats nor per- 
suasion. The next day he will cut John dead in the 
road, with no sign of recognition. He sees John, 
and he goes slowly and deliberately out of his way 
to pass John by, without a look or a sniff. He comes 
up-stairs every morning when his master's shaving- 
water is produced. He watches intently the entire 
course of his master's toilet ; he follows his master, 
step by step, from bed to bureau, from closet to 



86 FOUR DOGS 

chair ; he lies across his master's feet ; he minds no 
sprinlding from his master's sponge, so anxious is he 
that his master shall not slip away, and go to his 
breakfast without him. And then, before his mas- 
ter is ready to start, Roy goes off to breakfast, alone 
— at the Williamsons' ! He will torment his master 
sometimes for hours to be taken out to walk ; he will 
interrupt his master's work, disturb his master's af- 
ternoon nap, and refuse all invitations to run away 
for a walk on his own account. And the moment 
he and his master have started, he will join the first 
absolute stranger he meets, and walk off with that 
stranger in the opposite direction, and in the most 
confidential manner possible ! 

There are days when he will do everything he 
should do, everything he is told to do, everything he 
is wanted to do. There are days and days together 
when he does nothing that is right, when he is diso- 
bedient, disrespectful, disobliging, disagreeable, even 
disreputable. And all this on purpose ! 

It is hard to know what to do with Roy : how to 
treat him ; how to bring him up. He may improve 
as he grows older. Perhaps to his unfortunate in- 
firmity may be ascribed his uncertainty and his varia- 
bility of temper and disposition. It is possible that 
he cannot hear even when he wants to hear. It is 
not impossible that he is making-believe all the time. 
One great, good thing can be said for Roy : he is 



FOUR DOGS 87 

never really cross ; he never snaps ; he never snarls ; 
he never bites his human friends, no matter how; 
great the provocation may be. Roy is a canine 
enigma, the most eccentric of characters. His fami- 
ly cannot determine whether he is a gump or a gen- 
ius. But they know he is nice ; and they like him ! 
Long may Roy be spared to wag his earthly tail, 
and to bay deep-mouthed welcome to his own particu- 
lar people as they draw near home. How the three 
dogs who have gone on ahead agree now with 
each other, and how they will agree with Roy, no 
man can say. They did not agree with very many 
dogs in this world. But that they are waiting to- 
gether, all three of them, for Roy and for The Boy, 
and in perfect harmony, The Boy is absolutely sure. 




